- Most pernicious
- Be careful what you wish for...
- New Page
- New Page
- Homeric hymn to Pan
- New Page
- Home
- What the hell. I have nothing to lose
- My Adventures
- My Story
-
Essentials
- The earth is not flat
- The abolition of mind
- Things that only need saying once-one e tel
- Manners makyth man
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others
- So some guys had the really freaky idea that we should love one another
- Jesus!
- 'Judge not that ye be not judged'
- Goo
- The way we were: Anglican England
- 'Avatars of living grace'
- Ditching the theology of love
- Reality >
- PANTHER: the argument
- Moi
- The new Marxism
- Dill's World (blog)
- New Page
- The collapse of education
- The Anile Heir
- For Katie: Harry Secombe: 'The Lord is my Shepherd'
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
-
'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- Otting
- THAT AM I >
- Medicine: the joke
- It's like this, Doc >
- Medicine: the continuing joke
- 'By Tummel and Loch Rannoch'
- The laughing-stock of the civilized world
- And be damned to you
- In the garden with Mummy
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Blair: the icing on the cake
- Expecto patronam
- Scarlet battalions
- My family: any colour so long as it's red
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (1)
- Back to the freaking juniper-tree (2)
- Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- So you have a problem with my family, fucker?
- 'Jew-Communists'
- Margaret, my great-grandmother, an Irish tart
- The FUQs
- Dear Wannabe Nemesis
- Shall we try again, Bobbles my sweet?
- Evil
- Dixi (that's Latin, you know, Father)
- The cultural use of the lamp-post
- A home from home
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (2)
- For Katie: All times are now (3)
- For Katie: All times are now (4)
- For Katie; All times are now (5)
- For Katie: All times are now (6)
- Non serviam
- This colour doesn't run
- The balance
- Civilization - the balance
-
Gallery
- And be damned to you
- Catholic Encyclopaedia 1912: Obedience
- Voltaire and Jesus
- Tertullian, Women in Canon Law (1912) and Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)
- Padding through the Vatican archives
- The Vatican State
- Extra ecclesiam nulla salus: go to hell, go directly to hell, do not pass 'Go'
- A short history lesson
- A phrase-book for monkey-nuts
- Summary: the abode of the loon
-
Translations from Voltaire (mine): Concerning the Church of England
>
- Bukharin and Preobrazhensky: Communism and Religion
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Freedom of Thought
- Translations from Voltaire (mine): Transubstantiation
- Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason
- Lenin: Socialism and Religion
- Marx: 'So much for the social principles of Christianity'
- The Horcruxes and the illusion of power
- 'And death shall have no dominion'
- Led Zep: Kashmir
- Buddhist meditation music: Zen Garden
- Karula
- Summary: the love way or the power way
- Flashtest
- The worst university in the country
- Just finishing off, Dolores
- Miss Smila's feeling for snow
- Death of an expert witness
- Interesting, those trips to Moscow
- 'His single hand portrayed it'
- Of course no-one pays any attention to poets
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The Hospital
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- I am of course reminded of a little list (of a little list)
- In the garden with Mummy when the Nine turned up
- Grow the fuck up, comrades
- Thin red line
- 'The Party', 'The Regiment'
- Once upon a time there was a big red giant
- Britain's not very secret weapon
- The headlines
- The waning of the age of aquarium
- Letter to MI5: Playing The Patriot Game
- Those in peril on the sea
- The Patriot Game (song)
- Country matters: 'Elf and Safety
- The Matter of Britain
- Marianne
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- The rat-catchers
- 'And gentleman in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- The evidence no-one asks for
- England
- My father when young 2
- A few of my books
- The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism
- Barry's book-plate (evil grin)
- Barry: 'demob' if only from the MOI and redeployment at JWT
- Barry: publishing contracts with Curtis Brown
- Barry's funeral service
- Family album
- Barbara's 100th birthday
- And Nigel's funeral: read by Saul on the whale-backed Downs
- Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
- Class mum lives in a field with Dinge: the intellectual Left
- Within you, without you
- Because the world is round, it turns me on
- More Lattic and other incredibly cool stuff
- Hass and Venga
- The Lover of Jalaluddin Rumi and some things you never wanted to know about translation
- Love IS the law
- Shahriar's sites for sore eyes
- Islamic art and civilization
- Abu Nuwas
- Fisking Warsi
- Harry's Place v. Scumbag College
- Henrietta wondered if HP was too soft on Sparte-Smythe
- Koorosh Modarresi of the Worker-Communist Party of Iran
- Rumy Hasan of the Birmingham Socialist Alliance
- Sharia socialists
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: plus ca change....
- Illustrations of the Rubaiyat
- Hell, objectively speaking: St Catherine of Genoa
- Joe Stote
- Katy Kianush
- 'Brothers, if you hear...'
- L'Internationale
- A Lioness's Quest
- The Battle of Evermore
- Rosa Luxemburg
- Love in a time of cholera
- TEKEL: Religious, guys? Doesn't that mean shit?
- Please do not feed the god. He really doesn't appreciate it.
- Instead of God eating people, people eat God. Seems a good swap
- Herstory
- Ultramontanism
- Multiverse defined by the sexual equipment of the human male
- Civis romana sum?
- Sunday School, 1913: 'THE GATES WILL BE OPEN TO ALL MANKIND'
- Huxley
- Consciousness 101
- Jesus Christ the apple-tree
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Trial before Pilate
- 'For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die!'
- Much how I feel about doctors and other forms of intellectual pollution in the University, really
- Jesus, a human being
- By all means get us wrong, Father
- 'They turned to Rome to sentence Nazareth'
- Buddhism: frightful threat to the Church, you know
- Dharma the Cat and the Barefoot Doctor
- Non-duality
- Exo, eso, balance, Balrogs et le Parti Communiste Francais 1939-1945
- ComSymp, ShariaSymp: Fit the Second
- Printing and the Reformation
- Glossary
- Early chess: more, er, gentlemen (and ladies)
- The Crusades: it's good to look at dates
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Richard and Saladin: perspectives
- Nathan the Wise
- Portly and the Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Otters return to Thames (maybe)
- The Ottery, TW9
- Spring: rain and shine
- Problems with numeracy: cardinals, generals and rock 'n' roll
- Franny and Zooey
- The tail does not wag the dog
- Try again? I think not: finale
- How many deaths does it take till they know that too many British Muslim women have died
- Who killed Banaz
- Sexism, racism, Islamophobia, Marxophobia and a rather interesting school
- Aaargh! The Terrible Tonge-Monster!
- Just hammering the stake a little further in
- A second English Civil War: women against women
- The vorpal sword goes snicker-snack
- You were saying...
- Of course I've slain the bloody Jabberwock
- Chapter One - Stalinism is just so yesterday
- The rightful heir, the usurper and the usurper's bloody wife
- Wiping excrement off the sole of one's boo
- Fascism victorious, gloating and spurious - for the moment, certainly
- Six counties (sob, the horror of it) lie under John Bull's tyranny
- Calling Lord Haw-Haw
- Cool Britannia
- 'Hell is just as properly proper as Greenwich or as Bath or Joppa'
- 'Any old iron, any old iron, any, any old iron...'
- The Front Line
- Taking it from the top...
- Happy birthday to m
- Extract from The Anile Heir including Lattic
- My body my self
- Culluket, Kastanessen and of course Coulter
- The Girl Who Talked to Otters
- Notes, some of which are Caroline's
- Our revels now are ended
- Pallas Athene
- More notes
- Pan pipes - conclusions - allegory
- Shit, man, they won't even state their problem in the Agora
- Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad
- Poetry in motion
- Ain't no use in looking down!/Ain't no discharge on the ground!
- Queen - We will rock you!
- Queen - Killer Queen
- The wrong shaped body, inferior product
- What a friend they have in evil, all their sins and griefs to bear
- In sum
- 'Building a remedy for Kruschev and Kennedy'
- Classic Islamoballs (and of course pure Stalinism)
- Deja vu
- Really, there are more important things to think about....
- Sleeping Pan by InertiaK
- Hymn to Pan by Faun
- Pan pipes
- Dirty old men
- For Katie: 'And death shall have no dominion'
- The Stone Table cracked
- 10 intellectual frauds of the orthodox religious and their slaves
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- WE DO NOT KNOW
- Intelligent women
- 'Tales of brave Ulysses'
- Coursera
- Free
- Milburn
- A fifth column
- Ain't there nuffink wrong with my back, apes?
- Gunfight at OK Corral
- Gunfight at OK Corral: the movie
- Harmonica and Frank
- Captain's Log: Star-Date Whatever
- Women, the US election, the President of the United States and other cool stuf
- The fury of a woman who has been raped
- "Are all American officers so ill-mannered?"
- The grand-daughter of not-quite-the-founder of the Labour Party
- Meanwhile...the lamp-post
- 'Sarat's little joke': the Economic Liaison Officer to the Anile Throne
- Where have all the SovSymps gone, long time passing...
- Roots and reductionism
- 'At anchor here I ride...'
- 'Against all things ending'
- New Page
- Verstehen Sie?
- Memoirs of London medicine
- 28th August 2010
- Irreducible evil
- Irreducible evil
- Just for you: Anthea Turner - and the python
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- Just call me Serafina Pekkala, or possibly Lady Godiva
- A few reminders
- More? You want more?
- Grand finale
- It even has a pretty cover
- Bambi
- C'est nous qu'on ose mediter/De rendre a l'antique esclavage!
- A reminder of who is Marianne
- Voici Noel!
- Vicar of Bray
- Spanish Ladies
- Meanwhile back in Scilly....Song of the Western Men
- Twenty years behind enemy lines
- Family tree
- Pavarotti: Little Drummer Boy
- Walking in the air
- 'So you think you can love me and spit in my eye/So you think you can love me and leave me to die'
- Aw, come on, Doc, you're such an academic
- Je suis allee voir dans sa tete
- 16 chants de Noel
- 16 chants de Noel
- Talking of sheep...
- The distancing of Jesus from the churches
- So this is how it is to be
- And....And Stafford....And
- A limp prick and no balls
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Excuse me while I dress my hair with vine leaves
- Other notes
- Other notes
- Blair
- No?
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt One
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?' Pt Two
- If you're going to Acton Vale, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
- The truth about medicine
- Getting nowhere fast
- Bird in the bloody wilderness
- As I have so tiresomely repetitively said
- Untitled
- That which sustains
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- The lies they tell and the drivel they spout
- Rising above the evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- We too do not do cowering
- What the papers say
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind
- Dust and sparkles: child of Dust and Light and Lenin
- Just screaming
- More ridiculous womanish screaming
- Look, children, do look, it's a Five-Year Plan
- Fictionally speaking...The House that Keir built
- The heavy mob moves in: "We're Ancient Greeks. We do reason. And of course democracy."
- What did New Labour achieve?
- Apollo speaks
- Physician, heal thyself - or not
- Wholly unnecessary footnote
- Ah, the dirty underbelly of medicine
- Artemis' arrows
- Dear Apollo, I think the mind-itch needs to be stronger
- A few hymns
- Rhinoceros!
- Begging them to sue me for 15 years
- 'Now that I lie here/My body all holes/I think of the traitors/Who bargained and sold'
- Of course, if anyone has a spare atom bomb
- Whatever it takes
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- Shit on the sole of my boot
- You will see me dead rather than support me
- Vultures waiting for the flesh that dies
- Would you like to see the state of my mattress?
- 'When you've shouted "Rule, Britannia!"...
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- The Fixers
- The prince, the cardinal, the duke, the politician and the professor
- The Enforcers
- Me charm. You just strange
- So what exactly am I saying here?
- Pussy Riot: Yet another day in the destruction of Ivana Denisovich
- Untitled
- Pussy Riot (2): no pasaran
- Just smile for the camera, fuckers
- PANTHER: the animations, though not yet the videos
- Theme music
- So-o-o
- Just a stupid woman screaming
- Just a reminder of the Miracle of Exmoor
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The essential paradigm
- No-one wants me to survive. No-one wants me to succeed
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- You have heard of the University, Doctor?
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Going back to work tomorrow
- The gift of speech
- Point counterpoint
- To cut a long story short, therefore
- To cut a long story even shorter
- A few things you need to note
- Death rather than dishonour
- In brief, therefore
- Start of first draft - what do you think of it so far?
- Let me tell you a story, Jackanory, Jackanory...
- Phase II
- Thus we see the great esteem in which London medicine holds the University
- Washed down the drain
- Raped, butchered, destroyed means what?
- "I invoke Artemis"
- I invoke Artemis (II)
- The closing-down sale. Everything must go
- Murder by remote control
- Insufferable
- Befehl ist Befehl
- Order of play
- The Broadmoor annexe
- I say, don't they shoot collaborators?
- You pay them
- Dear British Public
- Graphically speaking.....
- I have taken a lead
- Endsum
- The good news and the bad news
- The education suitable to the masses prescribed by the C19th industrialist, therefore
- 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?/Medicine: the joke
- I shit on you daily
- It is fact
- A new continuum...Watch this space not
- Lady Sybil's swamp-dragons (footnote to the above)
- The Age of Aquarius
- But of course your usual Christmas present, little sick-bags
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before'
- There's just one huge and enormous difference, isn't there
- Shall we just highlight that bit?
- Untitled
- Untitled
- Off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz
- Untitled
- 'Don despicable, don of death' Could I leave it out?
- Finish with a summary of the facts
- Roll bloody up for the greatest show on earth
- Just thought to start to make a couple of videos
- Killer Queen
- It is concluded
- A short note
- I need help
- Get out of my university, animals
- Bluestockings
- Oh, when is this going to end?
- Go for it, fuckers, go for it
- Fnords, Jesus and the gerund
- Corsin and coradium
- TAH: Chapter One
- The cancer that is medicine
- The Petri dish
- Hanging them is good. Exposing them is better
- Lattic....
- Female = non-person
- That which sustains reprise
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Non, c'est pas ca
- Quod erat demonstrandum
- To move on, therefore
- So there you have it
- The script
- Ars longa vita brevis
- PANTHER: the movie
- Animal Farm: the midden
- The word is psychopath
- If you prefer, a septic tank
- And the rest
- Twin cores
- Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit
- Here the matter rests at present
- So just what is this bloody nonsense?
- My knowledge of Photoshop has increased by leaps and bounds
- Question One
- Words and pictures
- Etched in acid
- Dear fucking world
- More
- Caniba and Hokabi
- I think - class (Lancashire A, puh-lease, rhymes with gas)
- What is the point of what you are saying? What is it intended to achieve?
- PANTHER was created in 2008
- Happy Samhain
- Profound concern
- The Road to the Isles
- And of course Andy Stewart
- 'Banks on every finger'
- Don't tread on me
- A Miracle of Exmoor: a Christmas masque
- Untitled
- Pretty much a classic, wouldn't you say
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them (2)
- There is no reasoning with them
- A little give and take
- Extraordinary irresistible find
- Music
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- Reprise: 'Are you still laughing, Sarat?'/Medicine: the joke
- Mireille
- Espèce de pute!
- Etched in stone
- Hate Fal the most?
- Or Shav?
- Or is it Dill?
- Or is it Dill?
- Reminder: Ars longa vita brevis
- Reminder: PANTHER: the movie
- 'If you cannot make up rhymes/There are always the columns of The Times'
- Jarring blast: letter to my father 19th February 2012
- Vermin made simple
- You were saying
- And so, dear MI5, dear Labour Party, dear University...
- I who might as well be fucking dead
- Death rather than dishonour
- Strands
- Dolls on music-boxes wound up by a key
- Beyond death
- You can fit a lot into a five-minute video
- Je suis Charlie
- Marble Arch? The Brandenburg Gate? The Colosseum?
- Sort of cross between Athena and Artemis, really
- OK, lemme be rational
- Meanwhile...
- Meanwhile...
- As if: cui bono?
- Dark satanic mills
- Work in progress
- Welcome to sewer NHS
- Over my dead body
- Beam them up to the Great Prick in the Sky
- So there it is, part solution, mostly not
- That which sustains finale
- Messing about on the River: Lattic, Sarat and Shavli too
- Christ, it's a mad monkey
- Lots of nuffink
- Led Zep: Kashmir (2)
- The pillars of the West/By all means get us wrong, Father
- Evil reptilian kitten-eater
- Cockroach Protection League
- Happy Easter
- The very models of a medical practitioner
- The Act of Desecration
- No is the answer. What is the question? Loony alert, therefore
- The Grand Plan
- Go for it
- Waste of oxygen
- Prologue
- Intermezzo
- Just the time for a brief reminder
- Mess with the best - die like the rest
- Wailings of sick Trots not
- Heavy metal
- 'Allow me to introduce myself...'
- Freddie and Peter
- How to depict one of the most powerful men in the world
- Moog
- Anyone for tennis?
- Hair
- Hairier?
- Hairiest?
- Untitled
- Python and Allen
- Prepared for any eventuality
- Bad moon rising with soundtrack
- Riders on the storm with soundtrack
- 'Sing as you raise your bow, shoot straighter than before' encore une fois
- Not one foul animal among them will uphold freedom and democracy
- Flower power
- Meanwhile there's really only one song for Ardeshna (and Blair)
- Thin red line - the third of the set
- PANTHER: the movie - nealy there
- Do you like my channel art?
- Couple more soundbites to choke on
- Home movie
- Damaged goods
- How is Virginia these days?
- The Hunger Games
- Now on YouTube
- Second vid
- The Mutts
- The Mutt Pit
- The video I shall make
- Kindly therefore display all the wit, creaivity, intellect, education and intelligence you don't have
- The last picture show
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- Faun: Unda. To that which sustains, we can add...
- The Last Picture Show 2: female eunuchs
- In tg
- New Page
- New Page
- New Page
- In
- In the heat of the night
- In the heat of the night
- Not a complicated image
- Vermin
- 'It is a slave's lot thou describest, to refrain from uttering what one thinks'
- Won't that be fun, Fitter?
- New Page
- Nous sommes tous P:aris
- Meanwhile back at the ranch
- You may remember the Squelch?
- DIXI
- I laugh at you daily
- The end
- Fuck your lies, your cowardice, your hypocrisy, vermin
- Got it all sewn up
- I am Dill
- PANTHER: the movie - a reminder
- And of course the manual
- They deploy
- New Page
- Traitors and would be murderers
- And the other video
- Yes, there are, aren't there.
- Zopiclone
- Hell
- No answer is a very clear answer
- For Katie: All times are now (1)
- For Katie: The Lord of the Dance
- For Katie and m: The heart will go on
- If it's the last thing I ever do, whcih I suppose it might well be
- My fine body twisted, all battered and lame
- Reflections
- For Katie: The trumpet shall sound
- For Katie: Hallelujah Chorus
- For Katie
- The service
- Reading from 'Burnt Norton'
- Going Back
- or in other words
- I need help
- Time past and time future
- Tomorrow
- How many other lives have you destroyed?
- Arundel
- After such knowledge, what forgiveness
- Let it be said - it will be said
- Information governance
- So----
- Sitting in their tin cans far above the world...
- Another shit-filled weekend
- The Cull
- Society has the right to require of avery public agent an account of his administration
- The laughing stock
- 'Sing while you raise your bow...'
- Simple questions
- For fuck's sake they're all vermin
- Functionally illiterate
- Of no significance to me whatever
- The best story
- Mess with the best. Die like the rest
- The visible difference
- Drop the dead donkey: UCH imploding
- It remains the case
- Oh, and it remains the case
- What matters
- Salvat regina!
- Nancy Wake
- Nancy Wake 2
- 2016: your annual treat - A Miracle of Exmoor
- Dunscreaming (shortly, anyhow)
- Any normal person
- Malice
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Surprised by joy
- University Challenge
- Meanwhile back at the lamp-post
- Except to speak of the absolute horror
- And in particular
- Because I screamed I needed help
- QED
- Sredni Vashtar
- The wild and wacky world of the Waffen SS
- Think I'm a bloody servant, do you
- Irrationality
- Literate, literary, educated, intellectual England
- Refinements
- Doesn't the University see the joke?
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- On the whole, I think....
- Ain't taking it from a woman
- A great and mighty wonder I'm still standing
- The zenith of human possibility
- ' pilot of the storm who leaves no trace'
- 'Sing while you raise your bow. Shoot straighter than before'
- In the face of the evidence
- Watch this space
- Brennt Paris?
- 'I vow to thee, my country...' Aw, come on, you know it makes your skin crawl
- Within you, without you - especially without you
- Ain't I got no respet
- Goose-stepping morons should try reading books not burning them
- The Matter of Kadun: physics and metaphysics
- Cartoons
- Over-arching significance not
- They just wouldn't list
- 'And now that I lie here/My body all holes'
- Photoshoot
- I saved about half the books
- I just don't understand
- Fnords
- Pigs in clover
- See you in hell, fuckers
- Attempted murder
- Bog-rats
- Person or persons unknown but very guessable
- All you need is love
- One more time
- More
- Depict them in bondage
- In sum, Mr Benn's questions
- 'Arnold Lane/Had a strange/Hobby...'
- '...Doors bang/Chain-gang...'
- Etx
- Shoot straighter than before
- My moon and my wand
- My college, my university
- Inevitable and not
- painfully slow on the uptake
- This too you may stuff up your arse
- And of course this
- Pout
- TTFN
- Wiping excrement off the sole of my boot
- A West End comedy, perhaps
- Fascism
- I really don't think so, no
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Katie: He who would valiant be
- For Barry: Danny Boy
- Epitaph: it's your funeral
- Yea, though I work in the Land of the Valley of the Shadow of Death
- Do learn to read, Doctor
- The crooked road the English drunkard made
- By Oak and Ash and Thorn
- Can't un read plain words of English
- I get the gist, I surely do
- The world of perversion
- The Ottery has moved to the banks of the Arun
- Snapping my claws at the foeman''s chants
- Yes, the crash of the waves on the foreshore
- The even longer march of Everywoman
- You tried so desperately hard to destroy me
- Evil reptilian kitten-eaters
- The five most evil men in England
- Love does not drown in corruption)
- Like something out of Hieronymus Bosch
- Harry Secombe: The Old Rugged Cross
- The Drivellers
- Insolence is so very vexing, is it not
- Protected by the faith of my fore-fathers
- Lost causes
- Solid Soviet steel
- 1
- Murderous vermin who jeer at disability
- Clarity
- De profundis clamavi
- Reprise: Nancy Wake 2
- Generals gather in their masses...
- Cry foul and bloody murder
- Tumour
- New Page
- Ludicrous
- I think I said get me out of there
- This is not life
- All bets off, fuckers
- New Page
- Dearest darling Katie and Barry
- You think you impress me?
- Manners, ladies and gentlemen, puh-lease
- I suppose the exact charge would be
- No-o-o I don't thik you should forget about Lattic
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- I thnk, you know, dear Artemis...
- Sttill drooling, are you
- 'Thou shallt not suffer a witch to live.;
- My YouTube channel
- Education is what is left
- New Page
- To su
- To sum up
- The endless road traversed (nearly)
- It's a mandala, stupid
- Happy New Year
- Keep your loving brother happy
- Not with a bang but a whimper
- I, however, have outstanding questions
- Feline groovy
- Suitable cases for treatment
- I have spoken
- Nothing taxing to the sane
- I have of course the utmost...
- Doctors and nurses cannot cope with quantum physics
- Addended: Etched in acid and have been for years
- The psychology of medicine
- No outcry
- A very simple question
- To which task I shall now..
- RIP the Labour Party
- First things first
- I a woman
- The Howard lion
- Lest we forget: I don't
- New Page
- Pat me on the head and tell mee not to be a silly little girl
- I a woman of over 60
- A hanging matter
- The gross falsification of history
- 'The writers by their presence...'
- One more time just for the hell of it
- Lastly...
- The answer is no
- So that was the Universiity that was
- Hey you, get off of my cloud...
- Off. off, off of my cloud...
- A right waste of make-up
- So what?
- Footnotes to the above
- So where - ?
- What is the name of - and can't they - ?
- The glorious first of June
- Why has the door not been smashed down/?
- Your professors, Vice-Chancellor
- Anti-dialogue
- Shall we finish with a quick...
- They don't want the Jabberwock slain
- ABOVE THE LAW?
- So - I think -
- "Sentence first = verdict afterwards."
- DA and TM
- Post mortem
- Everywhere I go people are collecting bloody food
- how many people are on PAYE?
- I am naturallly reminded...
- Where was I?
- Where was I (2)?
- Welcome to the NHS
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- 'Senior members of the University'
- These are {{DOCTORS}}} and {{{NURSES}}}
- The girl who talked to otters
- How you hate intelligence
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- And you always get away with it, don't you
- The Hundred Flowers Movement
- New Page
- In one line
- Belloc, Apollo and May
- While readiing The Four Men
- Golgotha, place of a skull
- Troll toes
- So go for it
- PUT-DOWN
- New Page
- The required result
- Sex and mind
- Their mommas told them...
- Greece or Rome
- The new normal
- Isn't this interesting?
- New Page
- Ruthless vicious evil old men
- The charge is atteempted murder
- The C-List
- Q&A
- Ludicrous propositions
- Chained to the oars
- Footnotes
- 1095 and all that
- The Anglican garden
- Or of course a Kabbalist
- I have some time ago...
- Cult, Death-Eaters
- Not forgetting Nathan the Wise
- Cultural exchange
- And of course not forgetting...
- In short, in my young day...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun
- Nearly there
- I detect, therefore
- 'That government by the people, for the people, shall not perish from this earth.'
- Tingle
- Follow-up
- Cave-meen
- Not ancient history
- I have indeed graphically
- 'By their deeds'
- So maybe you'll also like this bit
- Just to be exact
- Which?
- Oh, all right, just for you
- Left something out, didn't I
- Didn't quite finish that off
- Ciletij
- Ritawa
- Shav and Zik
- The party
- Spetzi
- senoki
- Punching the pixels
- Reality
- More tails from the riverbank
- The Sarat and Maya Show
- Perverts
- If we may now...
- In short
- progress
- A national joke
- The Spetzi Effect
- Quanta
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Who owns me if I do not own myself? Reprise
- Boys having a bit of a larf
- You really have....
- And they all just sit there
- So exactly what - ?
- Hostile fascist foreign powers
- Personal, very
- Rubber dolly
- Essentially
- Fana
- LLLLOLLLL
- Unnatural, innit
- It's over, monkeys, over
- You might learn something but probably not
- So now Blair will tell us all
- Spetzi and Qine
- RL
- Qine and Spetzi
- Fucktards united
- Capital
- Well, didn't I just hand myself the short straw
- Do they actually understand?
- Quotable quotes
- 3D printing
- Ah, but can you print fluffy cushions?
- Taking an intelligent interest
- Vaudos 1
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- New Page
- Anniversary Waltz
- Automation: ostrich land
- The Kirit and Micaela Show
- New Page
- Cookery time
- What are they like!
- Until we meet on camera...
- And just because I know you love Homeric hymns
- New Page
- Dear Artemis, Athena, Apollo and Pan
- Baz and Paw on the loose in Van-Senok
- Back to the fermions
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- A crude, vulgar, ugly, insolent, mad and evil little man
- RIP English Christianity
- And the outstanding question is...
- Foxes, fruit, fermions and fuck you where you breathe
- Varna's Wall
- Particularly working on
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- Spring
- Fisking Welby
- New Page
- And how is the great penis in the sky tonight?
- After-thoughts: don't forget Isis and her pal Sobek
- The cat I don't yet have
- The Greater and Lesser Lunacies
- To whom it may concern....
- New Page
- Frank
- Cock-suckers
- Should you not be a movie buff...
- Marked as property
- Questions, questions....
- You will publicly answer those questions
- And this was Margaret
- Reprise: Our grandfather who art in heaven (though I doubt it), Howard be thy name
- To remind you...
- England the poem
- Back to the Viledeen
- Come on, I just want you to...
- So this is the story
- New Page
- Theme from The Water Margin
- Turn off the bloody Horst Wessel Lied
- Is it -10 yet?
- Chesterton - and Belloc
- New Page
- So what have I proved?
- Mock you incessantly
- No problem, no problem at all
- They have only one interest
- Misa and ban-Razit
- Rowley and Saunders
- HARD WIRING
- Bad science
- Dereliction of duty here, comrades
- Taking it from the top..
- New Page
- Dot the i. Cross the t
- More Fal
- Maya's assassination
- So-o-o
- Well, hi there, Sar-fenan
- And the third reason
- Ysabel Belinda Felicity Jehan Howard
- 'And now that I lie here...'
- Ain't they really
- And so
- 'Of course she has to do this on her own.'
- Who the fuck are Bonnie and Clyde
- How the cards fall
- And don't forget Dill
- And Shav and Dill
- Squishy, Archchancellor: not a healthy diet
- Back to you, Sar-Fenan
- This is not a physics textbook
- e=mc2
- A NON-EVENT
- woo hoo
- Her story
- Oi, you, Sar-fenan!
- Bloody kitten-eaters
- HHGG 1
- HHGG 4
- HHGG 2
- Reprise: It reallly is...
- Dave Allen
- Some psycho schizoid freak
- So absolutely insolently irreducibly evil
- This site
- Under the block
- Do you not understand?
- Gee, it's so wonderful to know
- Parameters
- I might go so far as to say
- I might''ve finished losing my temper
- Archaeopteryx flew like a pheasant
- I am not a child. Children are under 16
- New Page
- Blair, Corbyn, WCPI
- Smile for the camera
- 'Labour'
- Nothing you won't surrender
- HTF do I hitch a lift to Betelgeuse?
- "We are the Daleks."
- Back as ever to the Viledeen
- Scream quietly or the neighbours will hear
- The products rejected out of hand
- ComSymp ShariaSymp Fit the Third
- How to defend England
- If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you...
- National Museum Wales
- Why is this continuing?
- My mission I seem to have been landed with
- Dixi
- Go it alone, suffer alone, what's new
- Deep breaths
- New Page
- Gratis
- Justt to complete the set
- About that grave
- Damn!
- About that clock
- Oh pilot of the storm that leaves no trace
- Last but by no means least
- After which
- Or in short
- Notification...
- I think perhaps tomorrow...
- C17th England
- Je suis comme je suis
- Whatever you do, take pride...
- Selfies
- There remains of course my mind
- If you failed to get the gist
- Alice's Left Hip Esquire
- Limp pricks and no balls
- New Page
- Never ask them to strip
- You, off my planet
- If they absolutely won't...
- Achilles' heel
- Oh just do begone
- No-one on Planet Normal
- Welcome to Labour's England
- Democracy...
- New Page
- Bringing back the dark
- The best story
- Is there one single point?
- To come up to date
- Evil
- The destruction of the intellectual basis of the free world
- The mad relations in the rafters
- Let this be my contentment
- Results
- None of which of course
- A purely indigenous evil
- Here the matter rests at present
- New Page
- New Page
- A toss-up
- Blair
- New Page
- Reality 105
- The wearing of the green
- Recently come to light
- Growly snarly wolf
- New Page
- Five years later...
- Bobbles
- OK, assume.
- A flight of fancy
- So long as we understand each other
- Footnote
- Fisking Warsi reprise
- Why was nothing done?
- Job well done, filth
- Being a galactic mail from me to Zaphod
- Beyond evil
- In the 61st minute of the final hour
- Doo-be, doo-be, do
- English Christianity until....
- New Page
- 'I AM KING AND GOD AND LAW#
- So I get this
- Bad mood
- Another book for you, Blair
- One should always write things down - in some form or another
- All cleared up in five minutes
- Of course I have worn such a hat
- Thus, bloody thus
- No pasaran
- I continued...
- You prefer Misa and Ban-razit
- The 3D printer in the town centre
- Labour's apotheosis
- Selling women by the pound
- Why, my own mother and father wouldn't recognize me
- And the punchline is
- Do just go and fuck yourselves
- Fruit Loop
- Only one interest
- The price of a woman's body
- Eris
- Just can't hear you
- VR
- Not as exciting as Hokabi
- 'Unfortunate'
- Oh look what they're saying about me
- Should one really not...
- I am intelligent.
- From the archives: fisking Warsi
- Do MPs entirely grasp what they're there for?
- Our servants not our masters
- New Page
- Or you could say the reverse
- The problem is that there is no problem
- Irrelevant
- From the archives: who killed Banaz
- From the archives: ooh, we are so sensitive
- From the archives: wondrous multiculturalism
- From the archives: Banaz' sister spoke out
- Neither right nor honourable nor gentlemen
- The carrion chorus
- And so
- New Page
- Can hear you from here, animal
- Forgot it at Christmas
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain'
- So golly gosh
- And I laugh (2)
- What else can we talk about
- Thus
- Spare ribs
- Mene mene tekel upharsin
- And of course...
- Matthew 7: 3
- Blair
- This exchange
- Because it's a horrible way to die
- Peter
- Those convictions
- A purely pernicious twist
- The open mind
- They took away the post-its
- First part of Fal 2
- Sarat at the Shrine 1
- Sarat at the Shrine 2
- To continue...
- Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Of course
- Ridiculous and viie
- From the archives: obedience (1912)
- I should imagine...
- From the archives: And who kept this bubbling?
- From the archives: Voltaire on the CofE
- From the archives: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 1
- From the archives: the Vatian archives 2
- From the archives: The Vatican archives 3
- 2000 years making most of it up
- Proud Archbishop of York conducts his own daughter's wedding ceremony
- New Page
- Nothing may be said. Nothing may be done.
- It seemed a good idea at th e time
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Aren't they gorgeous?
- A precedent has been set
- Something else for the animals to gloat over
- Let's play doctors and nurses
- Women beware women
- How best may we accommodate you, o master
- The Agora
- New Page
- Violence power coercion desecration
- BOURGEOIS MORALITY
- New Page
- Once more from the top
- So what do I think?
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- To conclude: to whom it may concern
- Sarat and Hass
- THis is what I look like, Vice-Chancellor
- Sonderkommando
- The balance of probability
- Can I keep this up for ever?
- How you hate intelligence 2
- Et freaking cetera
- Honestly, darling, that mantilla
- The prince, the duke, the cardinal, the politician and the professor
- The Fixers
- The Enforcers
- By the balls of Apollo!
- Cernunnos
- Burunda
- Solidarity
- About that new sofa I printed...
- A position it is entirely easy to understand
- Yes. Yes, you are ridiculous
- Yes. Yes, everything I have said about you is an understatement
- Meanwhile back at the ottery
- The flawed concept of Islamophobia
- Oh rats!
- The revolving door
- Ah yes, my future
- Explicit liber
- So now....
- Deep breaths
- Thanks awfully for the suggestion, old boy
- A list, therefore
- Previous reflections
- Ah, culture
- Ah, here you have the nub
- New Page
- Tropes
- Letter to my dead parents
- New Page
- These they left me
- Don't forget Lattic
- Is it a bird? Is it a plane?
- Song of the Western Men
- The new national anthem
- Wanna see the Deeds
- New Page
- Another very fine song
- Shamima Begum
- The perfect citizens of a fascist state
- Grease
- Love, Serafina Pekkala
- To whom it may concern
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Also to whom it may concern
- So what happened then?
- New Page
- New Page
- Who has no authority in England
- I shall now potter off
- La trahison des clercs
- 'Those who cannot remember the past...'
- A little intellectual exercise...
- The view of the Labour leadership
- Take it from the top, Karl
- Is Abbott a feminist? We shall see
- Ooh, we are so sensitive
- Death before dishonour
- Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once
- Of course certain lines here
- Hide the Secret. Hide the Weakness
- The very model of a modern faith apologist
- Models of modern health practitioners
- Meanderings
- Negation
- Bloody certifiable
- Convert, comrades, convert!
- Found the articles
- Dangerous animals
- I name you the Duke of Plaza-Toro
- New Page
- New Page
- Christchurch 1
- New Page
- New Page
- To May, whom it concerns
- Shouts and whispers
- Hic jacet
- Hyde Park, London, England
- Condition of the Working-Class in England 1845
- Thus ComSymp ShariaSymp
- Ooh, you guessed
- You are so obvious
- In detail
- Hard wiring
- If mind does not exist., democracy is unnecessary
- Th Age of Reason, 1794
- Fisking Cantuar
- Danger: profoundly esoteric image
- The seer and that which he sees are one.
- Meanwhile hats off to the Guardian
- Letter to MI5 in case you missed it.
- Fucking Pollyanna
- The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls
- Perhaps in five year old English
- Non serviam
- The 7 principles of public life. Pix too
- Tor and Tonge
- Barking moonbats
- Herr Hitler, I presume
- A rich joke, Blair
- Eire in the 1950s?
- Cold shower
- By definition 'God' has to know what a lepton is
- Ah, the Yorkshire Ripper
- Parallel government
- New Page
- You will not look at them
- The magic migraine
- From about a year ago
- La nausee
- Yes, it's Operation Mindfuck
- Book review
- Happy bloody Easter
- A little quiet attempted murder
- Fal 2
- The curse of the killer zombies
- So the next logical step would be...
- Don't my silly little arts degree mean nuffink?
- Oh dear I have upset someone(s)
- New Page
- A few questions
- There are no great ones
- Gets so horribly in the way
- Violence against women, it's what you pay your taxes for
- 'Bring me the head of Alfreddo Garcia'
- Just don't forget Lattic
- The House of the Rising Sun
- The initiation of force
- Yes, that's right, I said Bentley
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Do admire your handiwork
- Marche funebre
- Misogyny
- On this 75th anniversary...
- The Enchanted Forest
- If you should confront these filth
- Encore une fois
- Impertinent evil filth
- A successful outcome
- Therefore...
- Which end is up
- I shall create it
- PANTHER: The Manual, out now on Scribd
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Indeed there are many interesting people to talk to in my mind
- Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
- To dig a little deeper
- Of food-banks and reprographics
- No dark
- Just remembered another spectacular waste of money
- More about Tories
- And more...
- This and that and some of the other
- Or in short
- Don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Memo to the Senate of the University of London
- Turning now to this Matter of Kadun I
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- The fur does settle...
- Models of medical practitioners
- HARD WIRING 2
- Strange things happen in the quantum universe
- Strange things happen in the quantum world
- "Are you still laughing, Sarat?"
- Falsity
- Je ne regrette rien
- Of course you could always check the facts
- 'Do you recall what was the deal/The day the music died.'
- The family handbook
- Goose-stepping morons
- Riidiculous
- Welcome to the diverse and plural real world
- Does it not sound sweet?
- This half-wit waving her degree...
- O tempora! O mores! O mayhem!
- Sexism is a crime
- ''I can't be treated like this.'
- And here the matter rests at present
- J'ai vecu
- Extreme unction
- The free movement of peoples
- The rules
- The witch must burn in hell, he trumpeted,
- You can always ask Google
- Monsters
- Just think, then you can add murder to your CVs
- New Page
- No dark
- In sum
- Give them everything they ask for
- Good for a laugh
- The end. Full stop.
- Just grow a pair
- Bad moon rose
- To whom it may concern
- And?
- And don't forget Lattic
- The Hall of Mirrors
- Because of course
- How to murder a woman
- Bwahaha
- They gave them time
- My big brown eyes
- A n all-party statement from the House of Commons
- Fat pig
- Always remember...
- Always remember...
- The whole lot of them
- Clear and present danger
- Note to Jackson, Hughes and Ardeshna
- So...
- Oy, you
- They did not like the New Marxism at all
- Irritable Owl Syndrome
- The drivel show
- Oh, you know, Woodstock
- Aqiuarius
- One more time and once again...
- Anglican England
- Since I feel bloody annoying
- At cock crow
- Civilized behaviour
- New Page
- 'Thirty pieces of silver'
- 'I look for truth and find that I get damned'
- Found the quote
- Carrion
- Books
- Singer to my clan in that dim red dawn of man
- Five Prime Ministers
- The victory of the Tuatha de Danaan
- A briefer response
- Bonfire Night
- Conjecture
- Or as I said more lucidly...
- They really didn't like my poems at all
- Denis Diderot
- The Age of Reason
- Some years later...
- We the people
- Side-dishes
- So do tell
- Facts
- Reality
- Because I know you hate it even more
- So perhaps
- Termites
- So you go right on..
- I even told them about the SOE
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Oh and this
- I think Hafiz would have liked Bunyan's hymn
- Fisking Warsi
- Welcome to Brighton, a plural and diverse community
- An 'All Party Parliamentary Group'
- Oh, when will this end?
- QEbloodyD
- To return to civilization.
- Fal continued
- Fal and Tet
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Maya's assassination
- They stripped
- For monkey-nuts: dixi
- Fisking Malik: Preamble
- Melodrama
- Fisking Malik: Part One
- The end is Nye
- Aberfan
- New York Mining Disaster 1941
- Resonances
- Don't talk to me about the law
- And so...
- And the other thing...
- you so love lies, don't you
- Writing things down
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner
- PAINLESS BUT PERMANENT
- Love from Serafina Pekkala
- A difference of opinion
- Just a theory
- What the hell do you think I am, you ridiculous little pieces of shit
- This will do for the time being
- This colour doesn't run
- The desired result
- No balls, 'Frank', just no balls
- Just call me Harmonica
- Hokabi
- In his tin can, far above the world
- Bloody psychopaths, in short
- Berchtesgaden, 1935
- You are so obvious, Blair
- So what happens next?
- So what is the matter with you
- End of the road
- Happy New Year
- Meaningless
- Kinky boys
- A sick joke
- So:
- Bottom-feeders
- New Page
- So why are you here?
- There, isn't that just so cute
- The Lizard of Oz
- And stuff this...
- And they have never heard of...
- Of course I'm a fucking witch
- Just getting out my tunic of skins
- Erudite, that's me
- In short...
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- So, as ever
- It is a slave's lot thou describest
- Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Medicine: the joke
- Are you five-year-olds?
- The Directorate
- Murderers and traitors
- Books....
- Books, filth, books
- Since I have no intention...
- Oh, how they stripped.
- Indeed, it is like this, Doc
- Thus...
- And the fuss is about what?
- This and that
- And don't forget Lattic
- Lemme set the scene
- Diversity
- This matter of Kadun: (inner and eso) 1
- The matter of Kadun (inner and eso) 2
- They are the Daleks. They are Masters of the Universe
- I however do not remotely think that
- 'See how I die. Just watch me die.'
- A simple case of attempted murder
- The final act
- Our story
- So why did they not support PANTHER?
- Love drowned in Corruption
- All times are now (1)
- Transforming the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- 'The Father took from him the Keys and the Sword'
- 'That government by the people....'
- Ir's a fucking doddle
- The smoking gun
- Read all abaht it
- Woo-hoo, it's a full moon.
- Carrion
- 'All you need is love'
- Just not macho
- So what precisely - ?
- so when England's answer to Indiana Jones...
- And you filth at UCH
- 'When Julius Fabricius, Sub-Prefect of the Weald...'
- More history (after a bit)
- Exodus 32 (well, loosely)
- A 99% confidence rating
- Something of the kind..
- Come to my funeral, Blair?
- Do anything for them, anything to feed them
- Forgot to repeat the Bobbles letters
- England in the C21st and the C12th
- In the event of.
- My head held firmly under water
- The most basic standards
- Miscellany
- The primate pecking order
- Cancer Ward
- Locke, Hume, Kant, Mill, is there anyone they didn't ban
- Farce
- The Tories' own quest for ideological purity
- 'opium of the people'
- Blair's New Model England
- In English not Latin or Arabic
- Because no-one stops them
- The thin end of the wedge
- Intellectually sickening
- And don't forget Lattic
- Sickboy
- From the Shrine to the Viledeen
- The company of civilized people
- The care of the penis
- So you're happy now
- Unlikely
- I hope...
- So very much more interesting
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun
- In sum....
- Shit
- And I laugh
- Feeesh
- And be damned to you.
- Avatars of perfection
- New Page
- Marked for extermination from the start
- i'm helpless and desperate and alone so just fuck you
- So just go and
- Wouldn't it be lovely to be in hospital
- Alice's adventure in hospital
- The NHS does not live by bread alone
- Just say cheese
- Clear and present danger to women
- There are those who despise being able to spell....
- I remain, yours sincerely
- Do you think I don't know what you are
- Thus troll toes
- Achilles
- Complete barbarians
- Bloody rings of power
- Lady Sybil's exploding dragons
- Mesdames, messieurs, faites vos jeux
- A societal archetype....
- Sascha doing his renowned impression of a baby zebra
- Pog ma thoin!
- The continuum
- Good to see the young people out in the fresh air enjoying themselves
- Look once again at spite-ridden lower-middle-class women
- So the hell with you
- Mr Morgan, Mr Paxman
- Ah, you're going to sue me?
- Or perhaps
- So which particular set of ludicrous and obscene lies?
- The opium of the people
- Throw them my body, throw them my life. Can't do enough for them
- The hell with all of you
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- All any of them want, my destruction, the destruction of democracy, destruction of the University
- Maya's assassination
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- Vultures
- They had one chance
- Monsters
- So the fuss is about what?
- Unrectifiable harm done with malice aforethought
- There was, you will recall, a bad moon rising
- Cool stuff
- Just what is your fucking problem?
- So now Emglishwomen are destroyed at the command of sadists
- Aggravating factors: adding insult to injury
- Selfies
- Evidence
- Bonnie and Clyde
- Chinese whispers
- Beyond evil
- Evidence
- They jumped from 40,000 feet without a parachute
- Kindle and things
- Bloody Operation Mindfuck
- What to do when they push Chinese writing under the door
- The word you seek is brainwashed
- The bloody cosmic laughter.
- I thought you might like to see...
- Women's bodies break easily
- They were told and they were told and they were told
- Not on the whole given to Schadenfreude
- Do they actually have IQs or do they flatline?
- Wouldn;'t it be funny if Bobbles were Francis
- All times are now, yet again
- Shame
- What you need to do...
- So all of it a right bloody waste of make-up
- 'There is nothing you can't buy'
- And of course I told them what would happen
- The sub-species woman
- Le quatorze juillet
- Oh and this bit, comrades
- 'Tell all the boys I'm back in the city...'
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- And, and, and
- Verse 5 of the Red Flag and don't forget Lattic
- New Page
- But of course
- Fill in a few gaps
- Merit
- Homo sapiens sapiens stands erect
- Bunch of boobs
- The required result
- Lower than vermin, much lower
- And another one
- The Wizard of Oz
- And the only outstanding question
- Cooking the books
- so come on....
- Hell and tarnation
- You did go to school, Blair?
- New Page
- New Page
- Sick-boys
- Pscyho-sexual cripples
- Understanding
- Oh and because I know you're thick...
- Another scalp for the sick-boys
- So, pig-bitch
- Pig-bitch 2
- Pig-bitch 3
- Functionally illiterate
- How you hate human
- The ghost in the machine was riled
- Dear MI5 person
- Or perhaps Linch and Goldstone prefer...
- Yes
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2
- Fal and Tet
- You, Blair
- This site will self-destruct...
- Left out repeating the juicy bit
- Hi to the University of Witwatersrand or wherever
- You are really very funny
- You are really very funny
- How very funny
- As if
- If...
- Can it be more obvious>
- Conclusion
- The initiation of force
- A busted flush
- Shall we have that again?
- The sum of the ravings
- This meanwhile
- But of course
- Point-blank rejection of the governing system of the country
- What part of fuck off does the Vatican not understand?
- Please save the crackling
- Happy Hallowe'en
- This bit's fun too
- Time it was
- Oh you know, like this
- Screw you....
- As if
- NHS bureaucracy strikes again
- More asses
- Show's over
- My body, my self
- New Page
- Hate intelligence, hate better
- The Library at Alexandria (and things)
- HARD WIRING A
- Hard wiring B
- Hard wiring C
- And of course they ain't fucking illitrit
- Index Librorum Prohibitorum and things
- New Page
- Jesus, look at them!
- So take a walk on the wild side
- But your Achilles' heel remains
- Addressing an empty crisp packet
- Empty crisp packets
- So here's to you, criminal vermin
- Only 4000 variants
- So they sat there jerking themselves off
- And on no account forget Lattic
- So, Mr Benn's questions
- The contents of the septic tank
- Lizard men
- Playing with my dolls
- Ah, yes, the funny farm
- Hic jacet 2
- New Page
- This was Anglican England
- I really understand
- First part of Fal 2021
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet 2021
- Trash
- The horoor
- The Reformation
- Uncle Joe and the Na-Mhoram's Grim
- Dixi@ I have spokwn
- And govenment is for what?
- And here is picture of Jesus with his beloved pet ferret
- Your Christmas favourite
- Peter
- And this is what happened
- Les Eleutheromanes
- I repeat, just for the hell of it.
- So I'll just go on thinking my own thoughts
- All times are now (1)
- All times are now (3)
- 'Be careful with that axe, Eugene'
- La Ballade des Pendus
- We do not know
- Banal
- The wrong kind of snow
- Oy, monkey-nuts
- Lizard-men
- And of course they all know too
- Fiver in the Death Warren
- And lo it came to pass
- One way to deal with sexual fuxk-ups
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- Frauds
- Complications
- Yes, but I know who I am
- Today satirized as
- Dill, the bit in the middle
- Question
- Ah, but
- What can be wrong with that?
- So what have I done
- And this is the state of my body
- Absolutely insolent, absolutely evil, absolutely degenerate
- Dangerous wild beasts
- Cowardly, contemptible cock=suckers
- Farce
- Thus, m'lud, it is clearly demonstrated
- An offence against law, fact, reason, sanity
- So we go through it all again
- The empty swimming-pool
- So I have questions
- One more bloody time
- It remains the best way
- Get real
- Two to the power of 75000 to one against and falling
- Along with Oolon Colluphid
- Head honcho
- So why - ?
- Civilized behaviour
- 'Be careful with that axe,Eugene' (2)
- Deep Thought
- England in the C21st
- So what's next?
- I do understand
- Right bloody waste of make-up
- An aggressive cancer
- A question of degree (not the academic kind)
- McDonnell's little friends in Iran
- Ah, yes, McDonnell
- Everything was perfectly normal
- Blog
- So when did you hear - ?
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- Time for a wash and brush-up (2)
- So calming
- The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
- Google Images search
- Am enthusiastic amateur classicist
- It only remains therefore
- Aum mani padme hum
- New Page
- WHen everything fails
- Jackson
- Thus
- Tsk, tsk, tsk
- If I may translate...
- Perhaps you prefer - ?
- Roast aurochs
- Totally synbolic, totally not
- Just doesn't matter, does it
- Base details
- History, should there be any
- Libro de los juegos
- Yuck! Kitten-eaters!
- Sea-changes: writing the 60s out of history
- So do just tell
- The end of the world is nigh
- New Page
- The party of law and order
- Thank you, Prime Minister, that will be all
- Fit for human habitation
- Aw, Dimitri!
- Yes? And?
- Ah, bon, les putes
- Indicting Tories
- Poor Mr Sunak
- Falsity
- RL
- Untitled
- The D-word
- Nye, wouldst that thou wert living at this hour!
- Sp gp fpr ot
- Fortunately there are more elevated things to do than contemplate infected shit
- The parable of the respirator
- Arbeit macht frei
- Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness
- It's the grapes that come from Chile
- Untitled
- The actual social principles of Christianity
- The social principles of Christianity as observed by Marx
- Bananas and eggs with your polio
- The hallmarks of the age
- Gilead
- Spinal tap
- Purr
- An atypical population
- New Page
- Leche-culs
- The Woman with the Book and the Woman with the Bow
- RTFM
- The ceding of democratic control
- I shit on you daily
- The ceding of democratic control pt 2
- Fortunately there are civilized people to talk to
- This is how to deal with pervert monkeys
- Pink stars and burquas
- Ditching the theology of love: reprise
- A happy communist life
- Or you prefer Nigel?
- Our papa
- My turf, bubba
- Guarding the pigs
- Just a little obvious
- New Page
- BDSM
- The deeds, Naylor, the deeds
- So Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- And the hunt continues
- Jesus!
- Question for those with daughters
- So what has happened to Jesus?
- New Page
- All on prime-time television
- Lest we forget: I don't
- You know, like at Hokabi and Caniba and so on
- Until they learn
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- New Page
- Don't forget they ain't fucking illitrit
- There when it gets shitty
- Luke 23:46
- Of course he argued with himself about it.
- Democracy: a system devised to cage and contain power
- If there are any future historians
- What to, the Higgs boson?
- Maya's assassination
- Dill and this Matter of Kadun 2021
- 1. Shav, Petrush and this Matter of Kadun
- Astronomy for Kids of all ages
- 1. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 1
- 2. Contemplating this Matter of Kadun 2
- 2. Shav, Petrush and the Matter of Kadun 2
- Who are pensioners?
- Party political broadcast...
- Look at all the little lungfish
- Unfit to govern
- Protozoa capering in the primeval soup
- Have you managed to be human?
- Life in a fact-free world
- And of course our dear friends the anti-vaxxers
- The wrong kind of Muggle
- Just put this on Twitter too
- Precisely how - ?
- Aroint thee, Muse!
- Death by government
- Cruel and unusual punishment
- It is, I think, the creation of Vernon and Marge
- Gee, isn't it just the market?
- There would not therefore seem to be an real difference
- The goose that laid the golden eggs
- The gifts that kept on giving
- Only 37.9 million tourists a year
- The Big Squeeze
- All the same gig
- Lolling insolent evil
- So now I walk with a rollator
- So, I deem
- Terror-tactics against a medically vulnerable woman
- New Page
- There is no dark
- Me
- The issues facing my grand-parents
- Don't forget the house that Keir built
- The desire of the moth for the flame
- The way through the woods
- Bit late for me and my steed...
- Art is individualism
- Magdalene laundries
- I told you not to put all the stars out
- Indeed the animals have a big problem with my family
- In the garden with Mummy
- ComSymp
- Chanctonbury Ring
- Doubtless too busy
- Light reading
- Reality 102: reprise
- Reality 103: reprise
- Reality 103a: reprise
- Reality 104: reprise
- Religious census of 1851
- Mortal sin
- If Twitter is anything to go by...
- The 1945 Labour landslide
- So just look at them all, Vice-Chancellor
- And of course an offence to UCL
- Time for a wash and brush-up
- The new Marxism
- Coal in the bath and the victim culture (2)
- Nice bit of bedtime reading
- Christ, you are so boring!
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- And of course this
- Just don't forget Lattic
- Thus Bobbles
- Fal and Tet
- Mr Benn's questions.
- Mr Benn's questions. A good clear message. The IRA
- Just so - so - so
- None of this of course is subject to discussion
- Therefore, ain't I got no respect
- Nor do I tug my forelock
- Book of Common Prayer
- 'I know that my Redeemer liveth'
- Meanwhile an offal-fest on Twitter'
- Spine
- This is what they expected me to push
- What? Oh, the picture Jesus mentioned
- Our servants not our masters (2)
- His Majesty's the model of a modern major-general
- The withdrawal of love and forcing oneself on others (2)
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa reprise
- Journey to the edge of the universe
- Oh they do get so antsy
- I am the very model of a medical practitioner: reprise
- I am the very model of a modern faith apologist: reprise
- Quid agas
- Balrogs
- C10th architects
- Truss and Braverman
- Imbeciles
- As for the rest of it...
- So:
- Totally ordinary Brits
- The corruption of history
- 'Imagination has seized power!'
- So, you, Blair
- Without fear or favour
- So a special round of applause for
- The Anglican garden: reprise
- It is remarkably tedious
- All times are now (1) reprise
- All times are now (2) reprise
- All times are now (3): reprise
- All times are now (4): reprise
- All times are now (5): reprise
- All times are now (6)
- Maya's assassination: reprise
- Lizard-men: reprise
- Doth it not say in the Book of Pious Crap
- That government by the corrupt and inane for the corrupt and inane shall not perish from this earth
- And answer Mr Benn's questions
- Thus the dirty shit-filled hierarchical fascist brains
- PANTHER...
- 'And now Amanda is seriously ill.'
- You might also enjoy Sredni Vashtar
- Girls. You were saying? About girls?
- 'And gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accurs'd...'
- This happened in RL
- Ooh
- HMQ
- How to lose operations other than war
- There, isn't that just so cute:reprise
- Ah, the sub-species woman
- How do you dare?
- Oh look what they're saying about me: reprise
- 'Blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain': reprise
- A lemur speaks!
- Welcome to London, Mr President
- HMQ (2)
- Gee, guys, what might have happened
- Neither benefiting from nor obsesssed by
- In sum, then
- The succession that matters
- In sum, therefore
- It has therefore been established
- And be damned to you: reprise
- Who did impose on a subject of Her Britannic Majesty
- How the cards fell
- Prefer high crimes and misdeameanours
- Time for something else
- Couldn't finish without your favourite song
- The Abbey
- The end of the world is nigh: reprise
- Men don't get it
- 'In order to rightly judge these efforts known as the "woman movement"'
- I'm sure Mr Kwarteng believes in equality
- Get real fast
- Roast aurochs: reprise
- It didn't work last time, peeps
- Doctors
- Ants
- Bellatrix
- Vaudos 1: so it's a walking fence
- Vaudos 2
- Vaudos 2.75
- It's like this, Nurses
- Letter to MI5: reprise
- And you do not make me into a porter
- I do so understand
- How you hate intelligence
- How you hate intelligence; reprise
- So how many people has Medicine destroyed?
- Don't you like my DNA?
- So you're going to sue me?
- I understand
- Hmm, so I guess...
- Yes I understand
- This is how it should be? Reallyy?
- Special mentions
- The wayside
- My country. Took seizin
- To whom it may concern
- Do tell
- A blank wall
- Democracy is so yesterday
- Nothing is too low
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/our-earth?
- No interest to me, old boy. No interest whatever
- Burn the witch at the stake! How much money we shall make!
- One quick question
- And something for Bobbles
- If...
- 'MI5's mission is to keep the country safe.'
- Reality reprise
- Reality reprise 2
- Your life in their hands, Episode 923452
- New Page
- New Page
- Never trust, never assume sanity will prevail
- New Page
- So in short
- The University in its death throes
- Narrow focus
- The absolute insolence, therefore
- In shorter
- Same old
- Same old (2)
- So there it is
- So they just couldn't possibly
- Ringleaders
- Encore une fois the manual
- Butchers and would-be murderers
- Nor of course response to my vid
- Or the second one
- The closed (sealed/wounded/stunted/practically non-existent) mind (20
- Please don't forget The House That Keir Built
- Sarat, Maya, Cioulis, Spetzi,Ritawa
- First part of Fal
- Fal 2 2021
- Fal and Tet
- So who knows
- As if I were capable of caring
- Above the law
- Depict them therefore in bondage
- Money talking
- Pure BDSM
- Please don't forget Lattic
- Meeee
- 'There is no dark'
- Hellenismos, tau-neutrinos, hanging
- Vita brevis ars longa
- True targets
- I a woman
- Boring
- Therefore, Vice-Chancellor
- Thus I refer you to...
- Break the stupid cunt's back
- So there it is
- irreducible evil
- Oversight
- Mock, yes, crawl, no
- All the things you haven't changed
- Cute family picture
- You can check it out on the DTIC site
- Eagles are rare in WC1
- High crimes and midemeanour
THE GROSS FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY
It’s like this, not of course that anyone is reading this, its being written by a woman, you understand. What was it, ‘blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain’, sums up the male apes of UCH to a T. They’ve probably got the psychologists on the job demonstrating I suffer from penis-envy. Yuck, I mean the female arrangements are so much neater and more organized. Yeah, yeah, I’m sick, mad, a freak, I know. The Soviet solution to anyone capable of independent thought was the psychiatric hospital and the gulag or just execution. The religious solution was to claim we did the work of the Devil. You’re very unoriginal, guys. However, it’s like this…You tell a daughter of Marxist-Leninism, a student of Voltaire, a child of Woodstock, a fan of Monty Python and Dave Allen, with a distinct fondness for Classical Greece, that it is inconceivable to criticize, deride and offend religion and I laughed. And I thought I might educate you but you are of course either plain ineducable or impenetrably evil. And I went on laughing until it was clear you were trying to destroy me to maintain your evil.
And it’s like this. How many generations have been assiduously taught this evil nonsense and of course necessarily not taught basic history in order that they swallow it whole. I think Hitler said something to the effect that the great mass of the people will more readily fall for a big lie than a small one. I expect he got that from the Holy Church too.
And it’s like this. Indigenous Jewish and Christian leaders don’t care if Muslims are happy. What they want is Muslims here, the perfect justification of imposition of ‘respect’ for their brand, what’s the jargon, ‘kept on board’, Islam must be kept on board. Thus for instance the abandoning of the theology of love, by ‘Christians’ about as Christian as Hitler.
DITCHING THE THEOLOGY OF LOVE
Of those who know anything about these things, it may I think be said we know what Jesus taught, and we know what Buddha taught. We are more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than with the Old Testament - and all the dribble about 'Abrahamic faiths' connects nowhere. ________________________________________________________________________________
So we'll just side-line Jesus, right, guys? More formally, what is being ditched is the theology of love, which probably most people would think the heart of Christianity. After all, Jesus thought it the heart of his teaching.
'God is love' is an abstract proposition not susceptible of literal interpretation. It was also central to the CofE's summary of what it means to be a Christian - until they changed the Website. Assuming they have not abandoned this pernicious concept entirely, it is not wholly far-fetched to expect the CofE to uphold it..
Nor, for that matter, is it far-fetched, post Sprong and Honest to God, to expect it to be able to speak to people about concepts of God that do not relate to an old guy in the sky. That any suggestion that there weren't wise men, shepherds and so on causes those who regard themselves as the backbone of Anglicanism to come out in hives and the ABC to be accused of atheism is actually not another matter.
There are interesting things going on in the CofE, people who are actually Christians. Inclusive Church is one. Affirming Catholicism is one. One of my local vicars is another.
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also
1 John 4
Those who are at all spiritually inclined of the post-orthodox-Christian indigenous population are probably more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than with the Old Testament.
This, bizarre as it may seem to those whose education in Christianity was more - doctrinaire, shall we say, follows from the pretty little Anglican educations we received.
So there was this God chap whom you praised, not because he demanded it or would punish you if you didn't, but because you wanted to, it welled up out of you, especially if you were a river, mountain or other geological formation. After 12 years of a sort of (wholly orthodox1) animism presided over by a wholly benevolent Creator, you left school. You might have gone to church. Unless you were totally thick, you'd picked up the gist at school. You didn't necessarily go to church in 18512 and you didn't necessarily go to church in 1951.
You'd been given the view that God/Jesus loves you unconditionally, no matter, whatever, that they were there for you. So intense in popular hymns is the sense of the personal relationship that it's almost surprising anyone went to church at all.
The way we were: Anglican England
Since we had all been brought up to believe religion was a pretty thing, exclusively about love, it really should not have surprised anyone that we became hippies.
Or that a Church that showed itself far from pretty, and apparently going to tear itself apart over whether women and gays could be priests, was largely deserted.
The Church might have decided to follow John Robinson, in which case it would probably have accommodated most of us. Instead it has shown itself a bunch of sexual neurotics happier in the Stone Age who have in fact now decided to dwell there with the like-minded of Islam.
The country is simply not interested in Islam as it presents itself. If that was the sort of thing we wanted, the Old Testament stands ready to receive our call. We don't want to know.
But, allowing for the possibility that God is far greater than organized religion professes, and permitting ourselves to see him as the essence of Life itself… the one who holds the universe together, sets order to things (even keeps our atoms from flying apart in a million different directions)… can free us from all that holds us back from a fulfilling life.
“Salvation” is not from hell, but from ourselves, and all the doubts and fears we’ve been indoctrinated into. Salvation is a freeing of the mind to live within all the possibilities, unlimited, and unfearing.
God is not angry with us, and he never was. He is with you always- in you, and all around you. You cannot separate yourself from Him, and He cannot separate Himself from you. You are one with Him, and always have been. Awakening to that can change your life incredibly.
YBMT
Jesus knew there was no separation from God
JD Salinger: Franny and Zooey
28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28
1. The country is not attuned to the Stone Age. I wonder why.
2. So far as it expects anything from the CofE, it expects it to uphold the NT theology of love, not ruminate about Abraham
3. What we have got rid of is being forced back on us thanks to a crude conspiracy of Church and State that ignores liberal religious people and rationalists and atheists alike.
The Christian churches generally present themselves as a closed-shop of those who can't cope with the modern world. Much is made of whether Muslim 'community leaders' in fact speak for all British Muslims. The greater problem is 'Christian leaders' presuming to speak for the indigenous population, all the while at one and the same time condemning us for not being sexually fucked-up control-freaks who can't cope with the modern world and claiming the 70% of the population who defined itself as Christian in the census believes what they believe. To them, their churches are empty because we're all spiritually lost. We are not all spiritually lost. We have merely gone past them, led funnily enough by the New Testament, left them to wallow in the ideals of the C10th, and so they wallow happily with the like-minded from other 'faith communities', monopolists clinging to a dead, static 'truth', their fear of what they call pick 'n' mix religion and the influence of Buddha and the Tao amply documented.
There is nothing they will not surrender to avoid saying the Qu'ran is incompatible with 1 John 4. Ah, pick 'n' mix religion! Theirs is of course the picking and mixing. That, presumably, is a bit they don't believe, doubtless preferring Deuteronomy.
5The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
11Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together.
I hope you are fully aware of this, gentlemen. Orthodox Jews at least are generally consistent. BIble-bashing Christians just make themselves look ludicrous, jumping on Leviticus to condemn homosexuality and sinfully ignoring the numerous other prohibitions of the Old Testament.1
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness
There is no accommodation with whited sepulchres and a lot of people in this country can actually tell the difference between good and evil.
There is nothing they will not surrender.
There is, however, the figure of a Jewish mystic in the way, badly beaten, heavily scarred, long dead, but what is death? The young rabbi is a mega-problem to our 'religious leaders'. So what's new.
1 Fruit? How can you have uncircumcised fruit? It is possible that 'circumcised' means something different to what is generally accepted:Matt 23: 27 23And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.
24But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the LORD withal.
Leviticus 19
And it ‘s like this. I don’t give a flying fuck about laws made by traitors for slaves, laws grounded in gross falsification of history, laws grounded in outright lies, such as religion cannot by its nature merit loathing, which would well belong in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany
And it’s like this, I don’t give a flying fuck about their filthy fascist death-cults of obedience and there are no intellectual and moral standards requiring me to give a fuck about dirty stinking fascist death-cults, the commands of which contravene al intellectual and moral standards, no intellectual and moral standards demanding I accept reason be suppressed, women and gays be hit, et bloody cetera.
And it’s like this. However much you claim evil is good, lies are truth, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, a proportion of immigrants bring filth to England and are not wanted, and the filth they bring is slavery, the filth they attempt to impose is slavery, intellect and moral corruption, the suppression of fact and reason. Of course the pseudo-Marxist Left who may be readily dismissed en masse as mad drivellers, for the simple reason that they carol they are opposed to sexism, racism and homophobia and then clasp to their bosoms sexists racists and the homophobic when these are key elements of a religion. don’t mind, being rather good at slavery and intellectual and moral corruption themselves, Others, however, do.
And it’s like this, these are perfectly normal people, normal for citizens of the fascist unfree world.
And it’s like this the arrival on these shores of large numbers of persons with headsets worthy of solid citizens of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany whose general attitude may be summed up as England, nice little place, needs doing up a bit, pity about the English, who think we’re free, we’re something that needs to be eradicated, a task to which the whole of the fascist fake Left has enthusiastically set itself. Since there cannot be anything wrong with for instance Iqbal Sacranie and must therefore be something wrong with those who loathe him, there cannot be anything wrong with his followers, taking their cue from the Islamic Republic of Iran, there cannot of course be anything wrong with those who take their cue from the Vatican.
And it’s like this, that’s easily done, we’ll depict them as racist and fascist and xenophobic for being free.
And if we dig a little deeper into this it is interesting, Polly Toynbee commented that the perception of the white working-class is that Labour is no longer interested in them. But more exactly Labour is not interested in anyone who is not a fascist and determined to impose fascism, because Labour is fascist and hates freedom. Do we suppose West Indian Baptists or Hindus peacefully bedding down thrill to their neighbourhoods being Islamist zones. Is this what they came to England for?
Thus too of course some Muslims, refugees from Iran for instance. Did the gorgeous Katy Kianush or the dad of Shappi Khorsandi
How about Peter Straker and Freddie Mercury?
Aw, guys, why don’t you just admit it? You hate art. Art is individualism, etc.
Did you know that ‘black flight’ is a recognized phenomenon? What non-white people who have succeeded professionally are flighting to suburbia from is not of course recorded, but if we think a doctor say of Muslim origin who works in a hospital that is not only multi-racial but multi-gender particularly wants to live in an environment that looks like a suburb of Karachi, let alone one that jubilantly declares itself a gay-free zone, I think we may be wrong.
To counter this Islamophobia of course was invented. Nothing is more ‘unacceptable’ than to say piece of sick filth such as Sacranie is not wanted on these shores, was not invited and if he does not like it should go away.
It is unexplained why England should have welcomed a creature who took his cue from the Islamic Republic of Iran and decided that forthwith England may only read and write that of which he approves.
Is Sikhophobia rife? Are there Royal Commissions on hostility to Buddhists, Jains, Hindus? Could there possibly be something revolting about how some Muslims behave? The ludicrously corrupt Left will not hear of it. It must be race.
https://www.panarchy.org/engels/eng.1884.html
Do you have a copy of The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State? I do, one of my father’s books saved from the wreckage. I can lend it to you, if you like.
And of course the first edition of The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.
Feudalism preceded capitalism. Did you know that, Corbyn, McDonnell. It was Cousin’s Rodney’s particular field. I mean a society run by self-appointed feudal overlords, a society in which I am looked upon by sniggering animals much as the obedient serfs would have looked upon a lowly goat-herd who dared confront the lord of the manor, such a society is terribly yesterday, whatever one’s views on socialism and capitalism.
AROUND 50 YEARS BEFORE ARMAGEDDON CAME, HIS SINGLE HAND PORTRAYED IT...And Oscar was his name. But of course no-one pays any attention to poets. Left-wing fascism has killed about a hundred million people. You really are going to have to have your arses kicked into eternity, guys. You do not learn. Asa rule of thumb, the only islets of sanity on the Left are those of us with some kind of backdrop of Soviet Marxism.What was it Cromwell said? 'You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.'
It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish…I confess that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion.
Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed.
What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first
.Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right signification. What is true about Art is true about Life. A man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely stupid. Or a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of his own personality; if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. Under Individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish, and will know the meanings of the words, and realise them in their free, beautiful lives
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891 ('A tinker out of Bedford, a vagrant oft in quod/A soldier under Fairfax, a messenger of God/Two hundred years and thirty ere Armageddon came/His single hand portrayed it and Bunyan was his name.')
And it’s like this, to whom am I totally unacceptable, a freak, a leper, crying because I want someone to care about what has happened to me, to care about what is happening to my lovely England, and no-one will and I laugh in your faces
Do tell, Blair, therefore, just do bloody tell England to whom I am wholly unacceptable, must be treated as a leper, destroyed mentally and physically.
The ‘new British’ come out of this no worse than that ‘old British’, and doubtless squirm and claim they took their cue from the likes of Linch and Goldstone and Naylor, but clearly are not here out of any overwhelming desire to live in the free world and would not dream of upholding a free and democratic country. As I have remarked the sample of the indigenous population is actually skewed by Jews and Catholics, members of minority religions. Linch may be Catholic, Goldstone certainly a Jew and Naylor probably just basic slum criminal who found he can run a successful Trust by espousing the mores of slum criminals.
And it’s like, when it’s payback time for what has been done to England, it must on no account be laid at the doors of immigrants, however vile their beliefs and conduct, but at the doors of the indigenous political and religious classes who rolled out the red carpet and refused to say, it’s a free country. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere, who used immigrants to try to destroy England.
And of course it’s like this. Do note some of the names, at the time this was written nonentities. Dear Mr McDonnell, it is not that they hold opposing views, after all you do too, it is that they insist England be run according to those opposing views. Breaks into howls of laughter. Just like you, in short. Do I suggest you leave? What an excellent notion. Frightfully unBritish, though. See below. Do we not have indigenous nutters without importing more? Why does your little Stalinist brain not grasp the difference between home-grown and import? This is my country and yours. It does not become the country of those who have newly arrived here merely become they have elected to honour us with their presence, not least because as I have freely observed in our wonderful NHS they call somewhere else ‘home’. I have no other home. That’s the difference, a little obvious, like everything else. Where do you suggest I go when you have quite finished turning England into a sewer in which a woman’s body is property and woman’s mind is joke, in which total intellectual and moral corruption are the norm, gross falsification of history. There are plenty of countries in which that is indeed the norm. Why do they not return there if those are their preferences, why bother me with their garbage? Free to come, free to go away again if they don’t like it.
British Marxists used to creep around in terror of distressing the holy, did they? Remember whom tha’s talking to, lad.
ComSymp, SovSymp, there were members of my family who would not have fared well under McCarthy, but this is
England. When I hurl the word ‘traitor’ around with apparent wild abandon, it should be seen in the context of total
acceptance of an Englishman’s right to gush over a hostile foreign power.
To not like someone's point of view is distinct from demanding he or she be silenced and only your point of view be
heard.
To campaign against views one believes erroneous or pernicious is distinct from demanding they be forbidden. One
accepts the right of others to hold their own views and seeks to instruct them in the error of their ways. The other
doesn't.
Without liberty, no-one would be permitted either to practise a religion other than that of the Church of England or to
have no religion. Muslims need freedom of conscience to be upheld. They do not gain fans by seeking to deny it to
others.
To seek to change the foundation of society from one where everyone has a right to his or her own views and so you a
have a right to your minority view to one where only you have a right to your views would not seem very bright for
there may surely be an awkward hiatus when those in power under the original system may shrug and say OK, you don't
think anyone else has a right to his or her views so why should you have that right, and pull the rug out from under you.
Some Islamists think to impose the new order by force. The Party I am sure would have loved to have a revolution but
you do need at least five people for that.
Like classical Marxism, Islamism entails a change to the foundation of society. Both of course point enthusiastically at
what everyone else calls a shit-hole and demands that here be more like that. If you are taking your cue from Saudi,
Iran or Pakistan, it is no different to taking your cue from the Kremlin. The fog of garbage concerning the supposedly
sacred nature of faith conceals this simple fact. Hey man, it's cool. No-one has to take any notice of people taking their
cues from hostile foreign powers. The problem comes from insistence that we do.
Pause to imagine some 30s Party member lecturing the British government of the day on Marxophobia. Well, you
know, I am a devout Marxist-Leninist and surely there can be no right to abuse the sincere beliefs of millions of people.
Marxists consider Comrade Lenin a towering figure, a giant among men leading the proletariat from darkness into light.
The rhetoric is appropriately similar: we want real democracy not sad corrupt old bourgeois democracy. We want proper
Islamic human rights not sad corrupt old Western human rights.
There are minor comments to be made, such as that in a world with vastly diminished communications, early
generations of British Sovsymps had no great grasp of ‘there’ but Shariasymps are clear what ‘there’ is like. Whether
either really wanted or want to surrender what they have here is moot.
Do you have a problem with inviting those who thought things were vastly better ordered in the Soviet Union to fuck
off and live there? I don’t, or only a personal one: chunks of my family might have been born in the USSR and family
get-togethers would have been a bit difficult.
To suggest people fuck off is distinct from insisting they fuck off and deporting them. Really, it would have been
frightfully unBritish to deport Uncle Richard or Cousin Rodney.
You didn't get hanged/sent down for 30 years/deported to Mother Russia for being an open SovSymp but for being paid
by the KGB to pretend you weren't.
The element of concealment is I think critical. If demanding the overthrow of the State were the key issue, 95% of 60s
students now fully paid-up members of the human race would have gone down (the other 5%, hmm). I think the exact
criterion would be working towards the overthrow of the State and its replacement with a system of government with
different foundations and pretending you want something compatible with the existing order.
Not surprisingly, the following in The Morning Star a couple of years ago caught my attention. I think Mr Howarth
should have spoken to a few Marxists before opening his mouth.
Leading Tory Gerald Howarth unleashed a poisonous torrent of hatred against millions of British people yesterday. He
declared that Muslims opposed to ‘the British way of life’ must leave the country, even if they are British citizens.
The Tory shadow defence minister said that people who saw the Iraq war as a conflict against Islam should be
considered as treacherous as Soviet sympathizers during the cold war.
“If they don’t like our way of life, there is a simple remedy – go to another country, get out,” said Mr Howarth, echoing
the fascist-type rallying cry of extreme right-wing leaders from the 1920s onwards.
Asked about people who were born in Britain, he replied: “Tough. If you don’t give allegiance to this country, then
leave.”
Mr Howarth, who is the Conservative MP for Aldershot, even compared those who despised the British way of life with
traitors who spied for the USSR….
Labour Representation Committee chair John McDonnell MP called upon Tory leader Michael Howard to condemn Mr
Howarth’s ‘outrageous xenophobic statement’.
Mr McDonnell added: “There is no room within a democratic political party in this country for people with this kind of
view.”
Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who represents the ethnically diverse London constituency of Islington North, said that Mr
Howarth is completely out of touch with varied multi-ethnic nature of modern British society.
His dangerous ‘Colonel Blimp’ outburst would ‘foment discord between communities at a time when we need the
maximum solidarity of all ethnic and religious groups,” Mr Corbyn added.
Muslim Association of Britain spokesman Anas Altikriti branded Mr Howarth’s remarks as ‘absurd’ and contrary to the
principles of free speech.
Mr Altikriti said: “We have laws to deal with criminals and those who incite violence or hate.
“To suggest that those people who hold opposing views to ours should leave the country, that this would be some kind
of a solution, is absurd.”
Front page of the Morning Star, Thursday 4th August
If we consider, for instance, 'if you don't like our way of life, fuck off to the USSR', addressed to a British working-man
during the Thirties, we see, I think, the matter rests chiefly on what is not liked, whether most other people don't like it,
either and whether it is a failure to comply with the foundations of the existing order. Neglect of the poor and hungry
was not compatible with the teachings of Jesus and a lot of people said so. The name Keir Hardie springs to mind.
'Our way of life' in the context of the 30s must surely be a capitalist economy subject to market forces as a consequence
of which the workers may have a very hard time. Intellectually the matter rests on that quotation from Lenin I am
exploring, a somewhat succinct statement of the question:
The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no
amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown
VI Lenin, Socialism and Religion
What is required? Should it be obtained? Can it be obtained without some fundamental change taking place first? Or:
can enough of it be obtained?
'Our way of life' in the context of belief-systems may be summed up neatly as the freedom to be a member of the
Kremlin-backed Communist Party and get on with one''s little life. I have said I do not know if Richard and Rodney
had cosy little chats with the security services, but I do know that they were not otherwise harassed for their beliefs. I
also know from this obituary http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/jun/10/guardianobituaries.humanities that Rodney
was an officer in the British Army in WWII. For four years, such as between the autumn of 1941 and the end of the
war; the Nazi-Soviet Pact collapsed in June 1941 and I'm wondering if they allowed Rodney into the Army while it was
still intact but certainly I have found nothing about his being interned between 1939 and 1941.
The decision to move to a different country rests on the belief it will be better for you and you family than where you
are right now. If you don't like it when you get here, no-one is forcing you to stay. The great principle of the free
movement of peoples, which I uphold, is distinct from any specious requirement the country you have chosen to honour
with your presence roll out the red carpet, bow you in and hasten to change itself fundamentally in accordance with
your views. However, where you come from may be Leeds. Your parents and your grand-parents have bedded down
nicely and got on with their lives but you have decided Islam is insufficiently triumphant and you're going to change all
that. Fine, you're British. Why then should the rest of Britain treat you any differently to any other holder of a minority
view, or in short ignore you.
'A refusal to accept people may mock and criticize Mohammed is not compatible with the existing order in which the
indigenous religion was mocked and criticized, in which the frame of reference it gave to the whole of humanity was
demolished by Darwin. in which the entire system of government is founded on rejection of those who claim to know
God's will as overlords who impose it on a docile populace.
What is required is a society in which there is no criticism or derision of Islam. Should it be obtained? No. Can it be
obtained without fundamental change taking place first? No.
But that's OK because the politicians and clergy fall over themselves to create the fundamental change.
And it’s like this, anyone who claims that I, an Englishwoman, a British subject, is subject to the authority of the Church of Rome is immediately so far out of his or her depth as to be instantly drowned. The Queen, you will recall, is the Head of the Church of England, but of course that’s crazy, she being a woman.
And this of course:
Yes, I think I may be recovering my sense of humour, still laughing at the monstrous bloated penises and the women who suck them. What did I say, the laughing-stock of every writer, every artist, every historian, every classicist, every linguist, every philosopher, every graduate in English in the English-speaking world. Yup, Whelan, this means you. You shall take a crash course in evolution and learn the use of language, you shall take your penis out of your mouth and reason with women.
“Are you still laughing, Sarat?”
Karula tried to ring Kile, was told Kile was away and discovered ‘away’ meant a month’s cruise. Grandmamma’s enthusiasm for seeing the world in her old age was clearly undimmed. And why should she not! she had cooed at Mitch who having spent his life moving from continent to continent had seemed to think it strange his mother should decide to do likewise. Not if it means leaving Var-segan represented by our two delightful children. She rapped her knuckles. They are no longer children. They are young persons. Better they were children. OK, have it out with the man.
“Sit down a minute, Mitch.“ She grinned. “Hearken!”
“Hearken? Could this be serious?”
“Yes.”
He sat.
“Well?”
“You do not want to go back.”
“So?” he said calmly.
“Before you were merely close. You are now united in a bond – this presents practical issues.”
“Death or victory,” said Mitch.
“I also feel that way. It does not, however, include bringing our – our remaining children to Azt.”
“What then?”
“You will unnecessarily exhaust yourself commuting – really, there is no other word for it – between Var-segan and Azt.”
“On the other hand our children are nearly grown. We are committed to my standing for election. You have always known that should I be successful we shall be based in Azt.”
“I know I cannot stop – not yet, Mitch.”
“Our children have come out well from being carted around the world.”
“A little more carting will not dismay them? I do not have a plan.”
“We have so far – I do not quite know how we have so far but nonetheless we have so far and to our cost avoided dumping our children while we go off to war.” He took her hands. “We are not perhaps being entirely rational.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps in the rush of events we do not talk enough.”
“I wish to shield them from any inkling all is not well because they know all too well all is not well. How mad is that?”
“Sounds like motherhood to me. I’ll talk to Dill.”
“I tried to talk to Kile,” admitted Karula. “She’s away again.”
“How remiss of her,” murmured Mitch.
And so they flew home and Dill was summoned to Mitch’s study.
“Sit down, honey.”
“I rack my brains. I haven’t done anything more than usually bad for at least a month.”
“We have to have a little talk about the future.”
She frowned.
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good, honey, good. I hope good.” He walked over to her and picked up a soft emerald lock, let it fall gently through his fingers. “I love it!” He put his hands on her shoulders. “You have always understood our lives – all our lives – were to some extent at risk.”
“Well – yes…”
“Your mother and I are returning to Azt to live. There are arguments on both sides concerning what I have to say to you. You are Var-segan, honey, and your place is here, but – “ he grinned. “Look who’s talking! You may if you wish come with us. Azt is not for the moment the safest place. In order that your mother and I sleep at night, you will not be even mildly idiotic. Nor will you if you stay! Your mother thinks that if you are far from her eagle eye you may behave – inappropriately. I do not mean taking calls on your mobile during dinner! As I understand it, she does not wish to wake to pictures of you on a soap-box. You may say – we do say – that is rich coming from the pair of us. We do not wish you to make yourself more of a target while you are a minor. We understand, as – as Baya and Essa understand, as Pietri and Caluna understood, when you are an adult you will do what you have to do. Do you read me?”
She looked at him a moment, then gave a small, slightly puzzled smile and saluted.
“Yessir…Dad – is it going to get bad again?”
“There is infrastructure in place that should maintain Kadun’s stability. The possibility of chaos, the risk of chaos, I calculate as lower than at any time during the past ten years. The risk of individual casualties of course is something different. Among them may be me. You understand that. That is your worst-case scenario. On the other hand Kadun will come out the other end of this and we shall too.”
“What we think – Qirl and I. Now we’re older. We didn’t understand what you were doing when we were home before. They came for us. Now they want Sarat.”
“If I am elected, they will want me.”
“Oh! I see that.”
“You would hack it. You would have no choice.”
“You – you’re going back because you have no choice. It’s – what Var-segan means. I understand, Dad. Dad…If something happened, I mean if something really bad happened, if everything…”
“I should expect you to fight for the last stone and blade of grass. It is not going to come to that. It is something we have avoided to date. By sheer gall, by raw cunning – and by accommodation. There is no longer space for accommodation.”
“It wasn’t a game, Dad!”
“I do not understand.”
“The picture I’m getting – you and mom think I play at being a stoopid teen to – to pretend everything’s all right.”
He was utterly taken aback.
“That is not what we think, honey.”
“You don’t trust me!”
“We know too well what we were at your age. Perhaps that overly colours our judgement.” He put his arms around her. “I think I have not said anything of which you were not previously aware?”
“It’s my way of being brave.”
“Understood.”
“OK, I’m a loud-mouthed brat!”
“We love you all the more for it, honey.”
She suddenly went on the attack.
“And what you’re telling me – I can stay here and be Var-segan only I mustn’t actually open my mouth!”
He laughed..
“Did I say that? Would you not acknowledge that you are a little young to be a leader of revolution?”
“Old enough to be Var-segan.”
“I can’t have it both ways? I shall be frank. Parental dread can have it all ways.”
“This is coming from mom – if you became President, you would not think it appropriate to retain the title, you’ve said that.”
“If. That is not the immediate future. A year is a long time at your age.”
“I can be useful here. But you don’t want that. You are confusing me. I’m not stupid. I mean – that’s not the right word. I guess I seem arrogant? That’s what worries you and mom. But that’s confusing too. It’s what you say. You go out there and busk it.”
He grinned.
“Here I think myself the model of rational parenthood and I do nothing but sow confusion.”
“I’d ask, Dad. There’d – there’d be someone to ask. I mean it’s what you say. I know it already. I’m not saying I’m not a kid. I’m not saying I can’t be an idiot. I’m saying I – saying I know – knew – have known since I’ve been old enough to know something could happen to you and there’d just be me. I’m not claiming to be fit enough or old enough or responsible enough. I’m stating a fact. Just like you said. I’d hack it. I shouldn’t have a choice.”
He cocked his eyebrows.
“So why shouldn’t you hack it when you do have a choice? You are 16! You are claiming you want to be Steward of Var-segan?” The disbelief in his voice made her giggle.
“No! Not tomorrow, anyway! I’m – I’m trying to say - look at it this way. Just about every kid in Kadun is having this conversation! School! Homework! Exams! There’s a revolution going on and it’s our future.”
“I seem to remember a well-known young man dropped out…” He grinned again. “Not of course until he had finished school. Revolution? What revolution?”
“It doesn’t matter who you are, parental dread’s the same. Though broadly – this is still a very class-based society, you know! Posh folks take the real risks and – non-posh folk make the revolution, are free to make the revolution because posh folks are taking the flak. We talk about these things, Dad. We kids want to make the revolution and you – parents – want to keep us safe. If it’s not that they want things to be normal. Want us to behave normally while you don’t. It’s really unfair.”
“I am enjoying this,” said Mitch.
“You’ve always found time for us. We think you’re miraculous! When have you talked to our friends?”
“Would there be some measure of truth in saying be damned to the age of majority, you are adults, young adults, but adults nonetheless?” She nodded vigorously. “What exactly do you want, Dill? Do you all want, for assuredly Var-segan should take a lead in these matters.”
“To be part of the action.”
“OK. You’ll come to Azt, at least for a while. Accompany me.” He grinned like a fiend. “Mingle. Suffer gross sleep deprivation. Live on – and this is worst of all – the Hadin Wadud’s catering. There’s qallie soup, qallie mousse, qallie stew… “
He walked in on Karula fresh from the shower.
“Remove that towel,” he suggested. “It is unnecessary.” He laughed suddenly and picked her up.
“Unhand me, sir!”
“Not a chance…Just asserting myself in the face of two of the damnedest females…” He sat her on the bed. “Our daughter…” He laughed again.
“I gather it went well.”
“It went. Our daughter is entirely prepared to be at least nominally Steward of Var-segan. Like now, man. How old was Sarat? We are screaming idiots.”
“Hold on there!”
“You keep wriggling.”
“Sarat was not in Azt in his mid-teens!”
“Different scenario.”
“That is true. You are not seriously – “
“If I become President, I should not consider it wholly appropriate – have I not said that.”
“A retentive memory,” said Karula drily. “She is 16!”
“I am a miraculous parent. I know my daughter’s age. She has taken a deep breath and geared herself up to it. There is more! Every kid in Kadun is screaming because parents are having all the fun. It’s their future. They’ll come back with us, school be damned.”
“I see. I should prefer Steward of Var-segan.”
“That’s next week.”
“Talk me through it. Make it real good.”
After a bit, she said: “What happened to our young people’s revolution?”
“We never meant this young. Suddenly we are an open society. They are bombarded with news, events, change, innovation. It must be as though a party’s going on to which we have forgotten to invite them.”
“One with an unwanted guest.”
Much later she said: “She did not mention - ?”
“No.”
“She never does. I have been as inviting as it is possible to be without forcing it.”
“I did not think I had to ask why my daughter will hack it because she has no choice.”
Mitch sat down to dinner.
“Shouldn’t the ladies be seated first, sir?” asked Qirl. Karula choked and turned it into a cough.
Qirl pulled out a chair for Dill, who sat and thanked him graciously, then turned wide eyes on her father.
“Like we thought we’d been giving out the wrong messages, man.”
“Do you realize,” said Qirl, “we’ve never been to Azt! Talk about country cousins.”
The one with green fronds is the heir. Then the Cult released its video and Mitch’s madness was forgotten. Everyone with half a brain knew the exact taunt. Are you still laughing, Sarat? Sarat embracing Maya who turned into Death at his touch. Sarat placing Death on the Anile Throne and kissing his hand. Sarat making love to Death.
Not completely surprisingly, no-one wanted to show it to him.
“They have produced something past obscene,” said Faun. “We don’t think you should see it, but you must see it.”
Sarat watched it. Sarat said absolutely nothing.
At length, he said, “Thank you.” It was rather clearly a dismissal.
If I have any sense, thought Faun, I take my leave. I never had any sense.
“So?” Bloody stupid thing to say.
“Back to the cutting-room?”
Karula went up in smoke.
“Bring them to damn’ Azt! Young adults! There is more than one kind of safe, Mitch!”
Mitch was unmoved.
“It is a video. It is all over the Grid. I prefer they see it holding tightly onto our hands. Should they not face the enemy of their future?”
So much about him that was pure Fidubi. Jaizal sat cross-legged among the flowers.
Cantilip tried to explain something to Mel.
“We were mad. We were all mad. We thought we should bounce into Azt and they would evaporate like shadows in the sun. Is that what we thought, Mel?
“You are not leaving me,” said Mel.
She stared at him in horror.
“Mel…No! No.”
“What then? We cannot go back.”
“My duty is to fight. Is that not also yours?”
“Were we mad? Are we? Where does that lead, Cantilip?”
She closed her eyes.
“It is nonsense to think we can win.”
A girl came running into the room in tears. “They will hurt him! You must help!”
Sarat sighed but tried to be polite. He listened stunned. “You are Sheheela, my lady?”
The Star offered herself to him. He declined. She said Jaizal had sent her. He said Jaizal should have had more sense and thought fondly of the luxury flats over in Turnin.
He mailed Cho:
Aside from the more normal emotional and moral dimensions – what is the cosmic significance of sexual intercourse with someone from another time, pray? Supposing she became pregnant. At that point, I may say, I begin to titter madly. Supposing all this were in fact the consequence of my sexual relations with Jaizal’s favourite. Or some similar – trans-temporal alliance. To be here alone is…..Words fail me. With Maya – perhaps it was mad optimism or just madness to think we should make it a cosy family home. Together we were in charge. I gloss it: ‘it is getting worse’. The change (of course) is in me. I alone am dwarfed, overwhelmed by history. I have to overcome it.
So let us can the crap. There is no ‘rooted evil’. There is this asylum I have made my home where time is a flexible concept. The field of flowers has been planted. What does this mean? What I think it means is probably impossible but nonetheless theoretically what I think it means is the ‘five-headed ogre’ comes through time. The most obvious objection to this is why then has he not confronted me, doubtless dripping with gore. You have observed that Jaizal has been absent from my guest-list. His ladies, however, plural, have not. I have met Sheheela. She was petrified, but not of Jaizal.
She said: they are hurting him, you must help! She was very young, younger than I am. Cho – ‘they’ hurt him and the rest is history?!!? It is a little difficult to sustain a conversation when time keeps hiccuping. I should not go so far as to say he was a much-misunderstood guy, but there is something here that we do not understand and have misunderstood.
Jaizal must have the throne! Because the throne would heal/rescue/save him??? I have therefore done something right, bringing her here. But if she could – take him to the source of the rot to ‘slay the ogre’. Zani knew. I feel that in my gut on no evidence whatever!
Let us posit – the rot began with Kaminua, who tried to fight it, and ended with Jaizal, who also tried to fight it and was – overtaken. Three things obviously rocket to the front of my mind. One is the connection between the chair and the worm-hole(s). In which case she is ‘making it worse’. One is that the Cult predates Narulis, never mind Kaminua. Might we then say - do we not say - that the Cult realizes, immanentizes – that from elsewhere we call death? The third – there’s nothing about it in the records, but that might of course be because they didn’t know what it was, only what they thought it was.
Meanwhile there is gross national product and the cost of shoe-leather. I have not come – I did not come here to – what has happened to ME? Someone once told me I should remain Sarat. I admit to the occasional urge to vandalism, flatten the place and build a glass palace, but I do not of course, other considerations aside, think that would make a scrap of difference. Nor is it in some sense possible to move out. Did I not say I wanted to sort Kadun? I have got myself where I have to be. What’s that they say about being careful what you wish for in case you get it?
Oh dear, thought Cho. He padded off to the archives and was gone a long time.
“The continuum changes,” said Hass, “but we do not change with it. Is that not remiss?”
“Very slow,” agreed Venga. “Darling, stop that! I try to think!”
“You will forgive me if I do not rise,” said Jaizal wrily.
“I think you are safe there,” acknowledged Sarat.
Jaizal smiled and the sun rose, the sky became azure, the birds began to sing.
“You are Zani’s heir.”
“I hope not. That would be too confusing.”
“Crossed wires. Is that not what you say today?”
“I have wondered,” said Sarat. “What happened?”
“Shit happened,” said Jaizal.
“If of course you have no objection,” said Venga, “we’ve decided to move in.” There was something about Sarat’s laugh that made him raise his eyebrows. “Was it something I said?”
“There is someone I should like you to meet,” said Sarat.
He is gay, now sets up a menage a trois! That one, gentlemen, we had seen coming.
His Imperial Majesty’s houseboys. Alzani-Meta stands in the sun laughing.
A second video duly appeared. The Anile throne shimmered in ethereal light. Death approached it clearly wounded, repelled by the light, but nonetheless sat and crumbled to dust. Sarat appeared with a small vacuum cleaner and sucked up the crumbs, grumbling to himself about having to clean up the mess other people leave behind them. He sat and remarked, with a good deal of satisfaction, “This is my chair.” But suddenly he was surrounded by a pack of Deaths, all leering and generally trying to be terrifying. He settled back in the chair, yawned, and turned the vacuum cleaner on them. Their black robes blew up over their skulls and they groped blindly and tried to pull them down over their bony knees. Sarat laughed and adjusted the controls, sucked them all into oblivion.
Mel arrived in Azt like an arrow shot from a bow.
“My lord Jaizal, we must talk!”
The World This Week got itself in a mess over whether Sarat was top of its list of the world’s most eligible men. Frankly are the looks, the title, the wealth and the disposition worth trading your life for. People thought that could have been more tactfully put. Nonetheless, they were clear that it was unlikely Sarat would spend the rest of his life single – if he had a rest of his life.
We had not quite realized how Maya’s mere existence had informed the whole enterprise. Ah me, those gender dynamics. Although a number of things, of which decorum was only one, prevented every woman under thirty from visibly lusting, the sexual tension was there.
Ah well, if he did decide to give it all up, he could always become a rock-idol.
Consequently any woman identified as having been alone with Sarat became a target.
Including Karula. Including me.
AIt was all a bit obvious. He couldn’t have been consulting our lethal cutting intelligences, could he.
Droit de seigneur and all that. A healthy young man has his needs.
Karula and I plotted. Had we been single, we should have grinned and said, I should be so lucky! Had we been single, we should have hammed it up. Playthings of an idle hour (we should be so lucky). A little old, suggested Karula. Should I show them my stretch-marks? We were not single.
My Cioulis was promoted. Reward for services rendered. I thought I was going to go up in smoke.
“These people are such crap!” said Dill.
Mitch looked about to burst with fatherly pride.
But Jaizi said: “Consider it a diversion.” That was true. It was much better than people dwelling on exactly what had been Sarat’s mental state when Maya died. It had all been very quick of course, faster than it takes to tell it, but not so fast that the word ‘shock’ hadn’t been bandied around.
“We are going to send this up,” said Karula. “They seem a little confused as to who is paired with whom.” She explained our cunning ploy to the men. None of them said anything. “Do you think we’re making them nervous?” asked she in a stage-whisper.
“This lot?” I said.
Mitch gave a fairly undescribable smile somewhat like a hungry panther who has just been presented with a trio of fat calves someone has kindly caught, skinned, gutted, dressed and cooked for him.
Before we had the opportunity to put our poetry into motion, they targeted Dill. She had been brought to Azt to be presented to Sarat, gift-wrapped with a little bow and pink ribbons. Dill, bless her little green fronds, said she preferred boys her own age – yes, of course he’s everyone’s pin-up but he’s a bit old, isn’t he. That of course sent the slime-merchants off on how many boys has the little tart Known Carnally. We are good at grading slime and on the whole thought max 5/10 for that one.
aaDill: “Is this what’s called a propaganda war, Dad?”
Mitch: “No, I should not say that. This is what’s called wiping excrement off the sole of one’s boot.”
“You could not call this young lady beautiful. A strong, attractive face. Her mother’s features.”
Thanks a bunch, thought Karula.
“Her father’s colouring. Her father’s hair – we think. A young woman who will surely turn heads.”
“Is there a joke there?”
Cantilip flew in for a board meeting of something green and leafy, not NoZone, Trees R Us, I think it was. Hass greeted her as his delicate and fragile long-awaited bride. “Shall I swoon in your arms?” muttered Cantilip. “That might be over-doing it,” conceded Hass. He unwillingly released her hand. “Beloved, we must part!” cried Cantilip. Hass turned to the gulping assembled company. “There are people confused about who is paired with whom. We thought we should send them up.”
“Soap-boxes are taboo,” said Dill.
“Nasty, dangerous things,” said Mitch. “No child of mine would be so foolish as to be associated with them.”
“That does not mean I cannot have an idea.”
“I accept that,” said Mitch. “May I – dare I – ask?”
“Not yet,” said Dill.
Mitch caressed Venga’s cheek. Venga reached for his hand and clasped it. “Darling,” said Mitch, “it has been too long!” “A day without you!” said Venga. “An eternity of longing!” proclaimed Mitch. There was a great deal of gulping over that one.
At least His Imperial Majesty keeps himself aloof from these – amateur theatricals. Just looking for the appropriate angle, guys.
Cioulis stomped up to Sarat.
“I am not your partner!”
“That is exact,” agreed Sarat.
“How can you not be his partner?” demanded Karula. “I’m not his partner.”
“I thought it was me,” I said. “I’m definitely not your partner.”
“This is confusing,” said Cioulis.
Inevitably we evoked: And these lunatics are running Kadun? That wasn’t far below the surface anyway and Kadun was not suffering thereby.
Dill spent less time going around with Mitch and more time on the Grid. Researching. Karula groaned.
“I am sure you are investigating the formation of shale mindful that you will return to school.”
“What’s shale?” asked Dill and meant it.
“Back to school instantly!”
Dill returned to her terminal and later treated them to a short tutorial on shale.
“I have an idea. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’s pretty crazy. You said the reason for all the school stuff was – kids having normal lives was proof the revolution was working. I can see that. What I’ve been looking up is education policy. Throwing out old history books, teaching by argument. It’s cool. It’s like school in Zur. Even student representatives, that’s just normality, Dabida-style. We the kids need to be responsible for making something happen. All our boundless youthful energy is being wasted on shale! There’s a big class thing here too. Working-class parents now do complain if they think the teachers aren’t enthusiastic enough. It’s not just enthusiasm about teaching. It’s about the whole building and whether there’s hot water. It’s not parents who are affected. There was a case in Klisan. The school refused to replace the heating. There was frost on the inside of the classroom windows. School’s where everyone gets a chance, yes? There’s an absolute row going on over school catering. Is it an admission of defeat to say schools should provide maybe the only good food the kids are likely to get? I think there should be student committees in every school with some kind of real power to demand the things that affect everyone every day.” She borrowed a line from her father. “You are not yet screaming. That is good.”
“Is that all?” asked Mitch.
“No. That’s the sensible bit.”
“I shudder to think,” said Karula.
“The rest can wait. I haven’t finished with it yet.”
“I have no problem,” said Mitch, “with the basic thesis, which if I have it correctly is that even those younger than you can take responsibility for things within their immediate orbit, things they can understand. One does not require a grasp of geopolitics to grasp frost on the inside of the window.”
“I too do not dispute the basic thesis,” said Karula. “I note that equally everything that affects domestic life affects children but I see of course that conditions at school – I have always hated the expression ‘more uniquely’ – particularly, particularly affect the young.”
“What is your answer,” asked Mitch, “to whether it is an admission of defeat?”
“I think it’s twisting things. There’s a word for it you taught me and I’ve forgotten. Pretending things are connected that aren’t connected. Kids are at school all day and you can’t go all day without eating. Schools should provide good food, end of story. Home should too.”
“What is the unsensible bit? Briefly.”
“Laters!”
“Nows. I do not send you off to talk to Sarat without knowing the whole story.”
She made a moue and giggled.
“Sending them up. This is also known as winding up the straights.”
“A dangerous game.”
“Not if every kid in Kadun is playing it.”
“Less so,” allowed Mitch.
“Hi,” said Dill.
“Long time, no see,” said Sarat.
“My generation, we kids, are being left out of the party.”
“There are some nasty guests.”
“I know that,” said Dill. “That’s not a reason for doing nothing!”
Sarat laughed.
“You’re telling me?”
“I knew you’d understand,” said Dill. “Try thinking of me as Cantilip.”
Sarat passed the test.
“Gender is not relevant.”
“It has never mattered a hoot to Mitch that his eldest is a girl. You know how we’ve been around the world. OK, not in Zur! In the City, just about everywhere else, there are people who think there are some things girls don’t do.”
“Such as leading, taking responsibility?”
Mitch, this is not what you led me to expect!
“At first I didn’t understand. It’s because mom’s such a feminist she’s over-protective. What – what happened. It could have happened to me if I were a boy.”
“Yes,” said Sarat.
“I hate them,” said Dill. “For Baria, for me, for everything.”
“So you’re climbing the walls because no-one will let you fight.”
“Do something,” said Dill.
“I shot my mouth off in Zur,” observed Sarat.
“I’ve thought of that,” said Dill. “I don’t think that would be at all appropriate – “ Half-mocking. “- in the present situation.”
“True,” said Sarat.
“What is a girl to do?”
“I gathered you are going to tell me?”
“I thought, I don’t mind not being centre-stage. But I do want to start something.”
“Backroom girls can be the brightest,” said Sarat.
“Mom’ll love that. Sarat – emperors are different, right. You can say things you wouldn’t say to anyone else in the world, wild horses wouldn’t drag out of you.”
“There is a conception to that effect,” said Sarat.
“OK…Mom was a radical feminist when she was 12! Dad, I’ve told you. I am his heir, period, full stop, over and out.” She paused.
“I think I guess,” said Sarat. “After what happened, to you, to your family, you think that if you were a boy they’d understand that you want to take a machine-gun, but you’re a girl, so they don’t.”
“Yes,” said Dill.
“How d’you know they don’t?”
“All of you,” said Dill, “you – channel it - ?”
“Refract, channel.”
“I know my father. I know so far as certain people go, he is capable of – advancing and firing, just keeping on firing until all the rats are dead. Instead he – you – mom – all of you – you talk, you joke.”
“The enemy is not – in a neat little army flying a separate flag.”
“Until they’re on your doorstep!”
“There is nothing about Karula at that time or any other that suggests to me she would fail to understand.”
“This may be a bit complicated for one of my young years but – couldn’t that be the point?”
“Tell me what you think, feel, hope, fear. Do not ask me to analyse your mother.”
“Sorry. But how do you separate - ?”
“It’s called growing-up,” said Sarat. He grinned. “Tell me about it! Dill – all of us, Mel, Hass, Maya, I, we took a one-way express ticket to adulthood. That much I understand.”
“You must miss her terribly. Tell me if you think that’s a pathetic thing to say because it’s so obvious.”
“Not pathetic. Just obvious. Thank you.”
“I still miss Baria. If I can’t talk about mom to you, whom can I talk to? You expect me to find an analyst, no doc, it’s not me I want to…”
Sarat bit his lip.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t willing to listen to you talking about Karula. I said don’t expect me to tell you my view. Mitch. Karula! My lady of Var-segan, do not tell me you cannot talk to your mother!”
“Of course I can talk to my mother!” She sounded quite irritated. “We’re too close. I know what she thinks. I know what I think. What I need is what someone else thinks.”
“Perhaps I’m too close too. There’s an elderly gentleman in Fidub with a lot of practice talking to mad teenagers. Would you like to talk to Cho?”
“That would be fantastic! Thank you!”
“I bypassed my parents,” said Sarat. “Oh, I rationalized it. Head of the family and so on. We were just too close. The hard thing wasn’t telling Essa what I wanted to do. It was telling him I hadn’t talked to him first.”
“I did talk to Mitch. Not the same scale. There’s just the one thing, do you see, but it’s everything.”
“That is obscure.”
“I love them to pieces. I don’t want consent or grudging approval.”
“That is more obscure.”
“I’m trying, Sarat. There’s a phrase, OK. You should know! Is Sarat taking people with him on this? I want to take mom and dad with me. I want them to understand where I’m coming from.”
“I want to understand that,” said Sarat.
“Writhing around on the floor enslaved by the fucking Cult.”
“You don’t have to try to prove you’re grown up to me.”
“In that case you may be the first intelligent person I’ve ever talked to. Yes, I know that it is a gross slander!”
“Dill – you’re trying to tell me that is not obvious to Mitch and Karula?”
“Yes but not how it sounds. OK, obscure again! Supposing something really awful happened to you when you were just past puberty! You’re not sitting there with neato grown-up explanations of what you feel…It’s like – what you said. Death does not sit on the Anile throne! But – people see that as a boy’s reaction, d’you see. Not a reaction a girl could have had. It’s not on their screen, Sarat.”
“I do see.”
“I was totally – taken over. It’s not I had a will to resist. Something in me that – was resistant. Mom worries they scared me. That and my – sexual health. Scarred, scared. It’s all on a different planet.”
“Then why don’t you say so!”
“Because I don’t know how to ask my mother what it’s like to kill!”
“Ah. You know what I’m going to say.”
She sighed.
“I have to talk to them! I’m sure your parents are brilliant, loving, rational people and my parents are brilliant, loving, rational people. Do you understand what I mean by caught in the parental head-set?”
He burst out laughing.
“Of course!”
“Right! Somewhere I’m lisphing my first words. I did manage to explain some of it to Mitch. It doesn’t come out right.”
“I’m going to ring,” said Karula
Mitch hooted.
“His Imperial Majesty would not have sent our daughter home in the hands of a cowboy minicab-driver who has abducted her.”
“That or worse!” said Karula.
“Be a bit sensible,” said Mitch brusquely.
“OK, that was out of court! Mitch, it has been five hours, what are they doing?”
“For a start,” said Mitch, “we do not know that ‘they’ are doing anything. He might have been called away and she willing to wait.”
“Then she should have called!”
“I really do not think it would occur to anyone except you that she was not in the safest place in Kadun.”
“Plotting,” growled Karula. “That is what they are doing.”
“An old family tradition,” said Mitch.
Dill arrived back looking radiant.
“You had an interesting time, honey?”
“I had a fantastic time. We just talked and talked and talked.” Oh dear. “Sarat says I should talk to Cho. Lots of experience with mad teenagers, girls a specialty.” That sounds better.
“But you found plenty to talk about!”
“He said backroom girls can be the brightest. I said you’d love that. Honestly, mom, this is not about making the six o’clock news! It’s about making a difference.”
“I understand that, honey.”
“What’s next?” asked Mitch.
“He’ll take the school thing where it needs to go. No credit, no come-back. IF it has your approval, he’d like me to just keep mingling, build up a network of kids who want to make a difference. He reckons that would stay below the radar. I gave him some names.”
“The leaders of tomorrow,” said Mitch.
“How about the sending-up?”
“T-shirts with Sarat and a vacuum cleaner may just be coming in vogue. Beyond that, no, or on stage by people who can handle themselves. He would not forgive himself and I quote if some bunch of well-meaning kids got hit because he’d given the green light.”
“I fear,” said Karula, “I cannot readily see anything to which to object.”
“You just became a plotter,” said Mitch. “Welcome to the club!”
“We’ve got so much in common,” said Dill. Eeek! “He understands about an express ticket to growing-up. He pointed out he was in Zur and I said, yes, I’d thought of that, of going back, but I didn’t think it was appropriate.”
“I am most relieved to hear it,” said Mitch primly.
“I am now going to be very brave and very honest. When you hit the roof, you will at least give me credit for my noble, open nature.”
“Possibly,” said Karula.
“I did ask first. The emperor is someone you can say stuff to you wouldn’t say to anyone else in the world. I said there was something, one thing, I had trouble talking to you about.”
“Indeed?”
“He said – he said the hard thing wasn’t telling Essa, it was telling Essa he’d talked to Cho first.”
“What it is you want to do?”
“Talk about Baria. Talk about what happened to me. What it means to me.”
“Honey!” squealed Karula.
“Oh dear,” said Mitch. “If I just put my arms around the both of you….”
“I have tried to get you to talk! I thought I had!”
“You were – “ Fluency momentarily failed her. On another planet. She managed to soften it. “A different wavelength.”
“Come on, team,” said Mitch, “onto the sofa. I am a big guy and you are not too old to sit on my lap though you may be too big….OK…We’re listening, honey. We really want to understand.”
“I said mom was a radical feminist when she was 12!”
“Well, 13,” murmured Karula.
“I said I knew it had never made a scrap of difference to dad that his heir was a girl.”
Mitch frowned but only with trying to work out where this was going.
“And?”
“But you still didn’t understand! If I was a boy, you’d understand.”
I have to hear this, thought Karula. I do not think my radical feminist brain wants to hear this!
“Tell us, honey.”
“Wanting to kill. It’s more complicated than that. Sarat pointed out it’s not like the kind of war where the enemy has one bit of land and you have another. You – he – all of you, you – ‘you too have suffered terrible loss’,” she mimicked viciously, “and pain and anger – but you do something. Make it positive.”
“You’re just a kid,” said Mitch, “you don’t have those big, dangerous grown-up emotions. It would help if I shot myself? No, I thought not…”
“Maya, honey,” said Karula.
“I grew up,” said Dill, “the day I was on the drawing-room floor. I’m not saying I understood what I was feeling or I could express it, that it was - all laid out on the top of my mind. Maya’s death kind of - crystallized it. Something resisted. I didn’t have any control over it or anything. Like a little – core.”
“You do not do this to me and live,” said Mitch.
“Just so,” said Karula.
“I’m still a virgin,” said Dill, “but I think I’m sexually normal.”
“There is,” said Karula, “more than one kind of - big, dangerous, grown-up feeling. I got it half-right.”
Dill kissed her.
“It’s because you killed them.”
“I do not follow that.”
Mitch hazarded: “It would have been – more raw, more open, more on the surface if it were not a closed case.”
“You don’t talk about it,” said Dill. “What it feels like to kill, even rats.”
“My dear, darling daughter,” said Mitch. “We have just not kept pace.”
“One minute it’s the story of the little green donkey…”
“We went there,” said Dill. “It’s just parents. Somewhere you’re Grandmamma’s little boy.”
Mitch grinned.
“That is true.”
Karula lay back in bed her hands clasped behind her head.
“I am not filled with remorse because I understand that this is a fast moving train. I am not even contemplating the deeper levels of my consciousness. One word fills my mind: soul-mates.”
Mitch guffawed.
“Gee, honey, they can really talk to each other. I am sure that for the moment at least he regards her as another sister.”
“That is a good thought,” said Karula enthusiastically. “Nonetheless I think I have developed a recurring nightmare. It goes what is a vast gulf in age at 16 – what is supposedly a vast gulf in age - is diminished at 18 and annulled at 20.”
“Alas,” said Mitch, “I shall be President and she will be Mistress of Var-segan. I knew you’d warm to the idea.”
“They are the same mix,” said Karula. “Southern radicalism and irtubi tradition. That is your fault!”
“I am sure there are many other young women closer in age in whom the two are combined.”
“But they are not part of the plot! That is a question on its own, all other considerations aside. Does that not above all limit the field?”
“He will not be in a hurry,” sighed Mitch. “He will want, as we all do, a safe and stable Kadun.”
“Meanwhile,” said Karula.
“There are places I do not go,” said Mitch.
“Hass was his first love.”
“You will not convince yourself that Sarat is gay, tempting though the idea is.”
“What is a child?” demanded Karula. “Perhaps I mean, when did Sarat become a man?”
“The day he drove into Kadun. Because he had no choice.”
“That is an interesting reflection. It is so much a matter of will?”
“There is a kind of no man’s land, a transitional stage. Childhood ends when this dubious state is achieved!”
“He has a thousand things to think about besides our daughter. Nonetheless, I find it reassuring to think he did not retire to an empty bed. There are two things. I shall put aside my nightmare and be intensely rational. One is that if Sarat could hear this conversation he would undoubtedly think us raving mad. As you say, a fourth sister. Of course they talked easily. No, three things. The second, being intensely rational, to whom should I prefer my daughter lose her virginity, some pimply lout who will kiss and tell? The third of course is that Maya’s fate is for the moment a remarkably efficient passion-killer. The future is another place. No young woman I think will in this now be carried away in a romantic haze of happy ever after.”
“I love you,” said Mitch. “Because of course – “
“Because of course it is far more likely she will fall in love with him than that he will fall in love with her.” She rolled over onto him suddenly. “We said we weren’t going to have any more. We said – we said three was enough. Since then we have not stopped to think about some things.”
Sarat retired to an empty bed and thought a lot about Mitch’s daughter, but not, Karula would have been mightily relieved to learn, in any kind of romantic or sexual way. He thought about her pain and anger and found it better than thinking of his own. He thought about it as though she were family and indeed (Karula would have been in seventh heaven) thought he felt how he’d feel if it were one of his sisters. Then he thought about Mitch and Karula and felt an intense anger that he hadn’t (yet!) been able to stop it, but reined himself in on the grounds that that was in part an unproductive thought and in part his normal state of mind. He drifted off to sleep thinking of Maya. Karula is the last person anyone could describe as heartless. She just doesn't fully understand the Sarat-Hass-Venga thing.
Dill went out with a few guys her own age and found them immature. This of course fed the nightmare but Karula regained intense rationality mode and recognized it for what it was, simply the consequence of the express ticket. Some nice stable young man a couple of years older. Sure, Karula, and they’ll live happily ever after in a cottage with roses round the door. Sadly, she dismissed the nice stable young man as a fantasy.
There was something Dill wanted to ask Sarat so she rang him up. They continued talking long after he had sensibly answered her sensible question.
“Hey, we click!” she said to Mitch.
“Sounds good,” he said. “Who’s we?”
“Me and Sarat.”
“Sarat and I,” said Mitch.
“It’s like having an older brother.”
Galvanizing one’s fellow kids is something one can only do as a kid oneself and Dill is growing up rather fast now and also becoming more introspective as she learns about the other matter. At the ripe old age of 17 she said: “I’ve worked through it. May I go back to school now!”
“Naturally I am delighted you - ?”
“In Zur,” she said rather urgently.
“Is there anything you would like to tell me?”
“It’s not serious. Hey, it’s OK to go to school!”
“Now that’s an about-turn! It’s OK to – be normal?”
“I can never be that! It’s OK to behave normally. It’s even what the whole thing’s about. I’ve been really trying to think. All of us, it’s like we’re in two worlds, the old and the new. There are things we’d do – no, have to do in the old and things appropriate to the new.”
“And if you’re 16 it can be hard to work out which is which! Or 36 or 50!”
“Right! On one hand, we’re fighting a war centuries-old and on the other we’re living in a modern democracy, or about to be, a free country, anyway. I do not have to be a major figure in anything when I’m not even 18, really I don’t! I’m not going to have much chance to be just part of a crowd. I have friends in Zur. I have friends in Var-segan. I don’t have to worry I’m not being grown-up enough in Zur. I don’t know if that says it right? Like being a hothouse-plant? Only it’s been me forcing my growth. Do you see what I mean? Yes, there’re all the obvious outside things but – I guess because of them? It’s been me trying to make myself. And all the other stuff. I told you, I’ll hack it if I have to. I don’t have to.”
Dare to believe, thought Mitch. Dare to believe we all have a future.
“My daughter is turning into a most interesting young woman.”
She kissed him.
“Thanks, dad!”
“If that is Sarat’s influence,” mused Karula, “may there be more of it!”
“He cannot allow himself to have regrets.”
“There is not a parallel between the instigator of the revolution and one caught up in it.”
“Maybe that’s what he told her!”
Cantilip found Dill a nest in the rabbit-warren. She applied herself to her studies. Any time she wanted an update on the revolution, Mel was happy to oblige, until the election campaign was all over the world’s news, anyway.
Analysts in fact divide the period into the election campaign and the pre-election campaign. The pre-election campaign started as soon as a date was set. I suppose you could say that. You could also say it started the day Sarat entered Kadun. Political parties had sprouted, as people worked out what they felt about it all. The main opposition to CLIK came from A New Alternative. ANA were clear in their commitment to capitalist democracy (and of course maintained CLIK wasn’t, but CLIK had genuinely changed), but stood for a slower, more traditional way of doing things, which tended, although they had female candidates, to mean women in the home and gays with a lower profile, kids more docile. Since they were political innocents they got rather severely nibbled by the banks, so they split. Others raised the capacity of the State to ensnare rather than liberate. Some were single-issue parties, nationalists, women, the environment. In all there were nine parties with any significant following and two major divisions. One was gender politics. The other was state provision.
I am standing here in a wind-swept corner of Vaudos witnessing yet another round in what is probably the dirtiest election campaign the world has ever seen!
And it hasn’t even started yet!
The stage has been set for this, we have to remember, censorship went out of the window the day Sarat entered Kadun. People have consistently been invited to say exactly what they think. Consequently, smear, slander, innuendo are rife.
But confronting it is reality, the sheer experience of change. Bedrock remains what has been achieved by the sheer hard work of the Workers’ Committees at grass-roots level – and by their unflinching backing from the top! It does not matter – I trust! – how often people are told Sarat eats babies – what you know is you eat better, your kids have shoes. Broadly what has happened here is that Kadun’s class war has realigned. Whereas previously we had – thought we had – all other sections of society crushing the working-classes, now we have the workers, the intelligentsia, and of course the aristocracy on one side and a load of people in the middle who feel more or less threatened thereby.
I think we need to be clear what we mean by ‘aristocracy’. Let’s be exact, it’s a handful of people part of an ancient feudal system!
And one or two real old families. Eban-tole!
That is true but my point is there is a caste which likes to think itself aristocratic and who indeed to us common folks would seem aristocratic which are very much not part of the revolutionary trend. .
Let us face it, we expect this election to be rocked by blasts.
I have wondered about that. The tragic truth is that terrorism has consolidated the revolution!
Even the smears, gross as they are, only recycle the garbage we heard before Sarat entered Kadun.
And ever since! The radicalization of the working-class, particularly on social issues, is most certainly to the credit of CLIK, but we cannot forget it is equally to the credit of Micheal and Karula ban-sarndit-vaq, Mel Talal!
Hasiyata Talal! I mean it’s incredible. These are people who two years ago beat up gays.
I was talking to a man, a gay man, who said, no, it was more subtle than that. The dominant ideology gave free rein to gay-bashers and others thought it wise to keep silent. As we know, the dominant ideology changed!
Dill considered returning to Kadun, but really, she said disparagingly, this isn’t the sort of superficial farce they hold in Harn, all about kissing babies. This isn’t about Mitch’s and Karula’s beautiful children, it’s about what people have done. Early polls showed people thought Mitch had done a lot.
“Ask you something?” she said to Cantilip.
“Sure!”
“What really does it mean, ‘emperor’s steward’, in the context of normality? I mean, when has Kadun been normal! I know my – duty if things went pear-shaped. That’s worst-case scenario.”
“I think you mean the rule of law,” said Cantilip.
“That’s it. If you actually don’t have to protect people.”
“It’s a good question. To me it’s about keeping communication open, communication with the emperor. Remember we’re running on the same rules! Anybody can go to Sarat. Someone in Var-segan would find it easier to go to you. The rule of law is great. Law can become bureaucracy, people getting tangled in red tape.”
“Being prepared to cut the crap,” said Dill
“Do I hear an echo of Mitch’s dulcet tones!”
“Not much different, really! A parallel government, that’s what I heard on the radio. I rather thought it was true.”
“I take it it wasn’t particularly positive.”
“A threat to our fledgeling democracy.”
“Drivel,” said Cantilip. “An assurance people will be heard.”
A major – oh, all right, a mega – row then blew up over the army. It is unthinkable to those of us who believe in a real democracy that the ‘Imperial Army’ be accountable only to the emperor.
Who said that? said the army. Did you say that? I didn’t hear anyone say that.
It was formally clarified by someone who just managed to keep a straight face that of course the army was the servant of the state.
Right, man! Until it decides not to be.
Challin said: We serve the people of Kadun, being the people of Kadun. It is our role, our duty and our honour to ensure the proper conduct of this poll. There would appear to be certain elements who do not care for the notion they may not terrorize the electorate!
It’s a big problem for them, yawned Faun, not being able to rig the ballot because a thoroughly deterrorized populace would scream the roof down to the nearest guy or girl in khaki.
If all is well, pointed out someone, trying to be soothing, the Crown and the State are synonymous.
Mitch said: “To just reiterate, the three heads of the people are the Crown, the State and the Constitution, the law. Should one go haywire, the other two remain. As well to say it is a threat that the courts may command the army. Let us cut to the chase. If the Imperial Army were a threat the country would be under martial law and there would be no election.”
“Point taken! Someone has to be C-in-C!”
“That is Sarat,” acknowledged Mitch.
“What is really the issue is whether the army is a law unto itself.”
“You got it,” said Mitch. “Try the servant of democracy.”
“It could uphold counter-revolution.”
“It could. That is true, however, of any nation under the sun. I ask you to consider who has toiled day and night to make our revolution work! Apart from me, of course.”
“Lovely sense of humour,” said Qine.
Dill got into an argument in the Saa’nda Senta.
“In the first place, if you feel so desperately strongly about Kadun, why aren’t you in Kadun?” A couple of people who knew who she was choked quietly into their beer. “In the second place, you obviously don’t know a d –arned thing about Kadun. Why are you standing here talking such rubbish?”
The orator gaped.
“And you are who?”
“Mitch’s daughter.”
Couple of wolf-whistles.
“Never have guessed!”
“So you think perpetuating a feudal system that was out of date ten centuries ago is rubbish! ‘Course you do, love. Your privilege comes from centuries of the sweat of the working man, from exploitation, from deference. Yessir nosir three bags flippin’ full, sir. It went out with wearing skins.”
Dill realized she was unspeakably angry and did her best to control it.
“My privilege lies in being assaulted by the Cult, my privilege lies in my dead sister, in watching my mother kill. Maya’s privilege lies in being dead. Sorg’s privilege lies in being dead. Let me tell you about my family’s privilege. It means sticking our necks out century in, century out, to defend the working man. No-one’s denying it wasn’t democracy! It was a hell of a lot better than whingeing in the safety of Dabida! You’re just a fake. Ask Qine about Mitch’s privilege!”
“CLIK’s sold out, everyone knows that! Bought and paid for.”
“And you’re not?” shot back Dill.
“That is a very serious insinuation.”
“Oh gosh,” said Dill.
“Well, what are you doing here!”
“Enjoying the last fleeting remnants of childhood until I take over Var-segan when Mitch is elected! That was the theory.”
“You? My fine lady Var-sega’?”
“Me. You have a problem?”
Although attacking Qine and Mitch is not the way to Zur’s heart, Zuri have strong stomachs for the –er, cut and thrust of political debate, and now they started to enjoy this.
“I expect it’s the hair!”
“Mitch never looked like that!”
“She’s nothing like him, is she!”
The orator got a word in edgeways.
“And all the little pezzies will bow and curtsey. What’s a stupid little tart like you ever done to earn respect?”
“You are a moron,” said Dill. “Somewhere in all this, I had a talk with another stupid little tart. She’s generally called Cantilip. Because we are not morons, we actually talked about what it all means when Kadun is a democracy. It means what Alzani-Meta means. That’s what it always did mean. Did and will. Kadun’s bigger. It means keeping the line open to the Crown. If you want to stand in the middle of Zur and challenge the outmoded feudal system that is Alzani-Meta, you be my guest! I’ll just enjoy.”
“’Course she can’t be Mitch’s daughter!”
It’s like this, not of course that anyone is reading this, its being written by a woman, you understand. What was it, ‘blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain’, sums up the male apes of UCH to a T. They’ve probably got the psychologists on the job demonstrating I suffer from penis-envy. Yuck, I mean the female arrangements are so much neater and more organized. Yeah, yeah, I’m sick, mad, a freak, I know. The Soviet solution to anyone capable of independent thought was the psychiatric hospital and the gulag or just execution. The religious solution was to claim we did the work of the Devil. You’re very unoriginal, guys. However, it’s like this…You tell a daughter of Marxist-Leninism, a student of Voltaire, a child of Woodstock, a fan of Monty Python and Dave Allen, with a distinct fondness for Classical Greece, that it is inconceivable to criticize, deride and offend religion and I laughed. And I thought I might educate you but you are of course either plain ineducable or impenetrably evil. And I went on laughing until it was clear you were trying to destroy me to maintain your evil.
And it’s like this. How many generations have been assiduously taught this evil nonsense and of course necessarily not taught basic history in order that they swallow it whole. I think Hitler said something to the effect that the great mass of the people will more readily fall for a big lie than a small one. I expect he got that from the Holy Church too.
And it’s like this. Indigenous Jewish and Christian leaders don’t care if Muslims are happy. What they want is Muslims here, the perfect justification of imposition of ‘respect’ for their brand, what’s the jargon, ‘kept on board’, Islam must be kept on board. Thus for instance the abandoning of the theology of love, by ‘Christians’ about as Christian as Hitler.
DITCHING THE THEOLOGY OF LOVE
Of those who know anything about these things, it may I think be said we know what Jesus taught, and we know what Buddha taught. We are more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than with the Old Testament - and all the dribble about 'Abrahamic faiths' connects nowhere. ________________________________________________________________________________
So we'll just side-line Jesus, right, guys? More formally, what is being ditched is the theology of love, which probably most people would think the heart of Christianity. After all, Jesus thought it the heart of his teaching.
'God is love' is an abstract proposition not susceptible of literal interpretation. It was also central to the CofE's summary of what it means to be a Christian - until they changed the Website. Assuming they have not abandoned this pernicious concept entirely, it is not wholly far-fetched to expect the CofE to uphold it..
Nor, for that matter, is it far-fetched, post Sprong and Honest to God, to expect it to be able to speak to people about concepts of God that do not relate to an old guy in the sky. That any suggestion that there weren't wise men, shepherds and so on causes those who regard themselves as the backbone of Anglicanism to come out in hives and the ABC to be accused of atheism is actually not another matter.
There are interesting things going on in the CofE, people who are actually Christians. Inclusive Church is one. Affirming Catholicism is one. One of my local vicars is another.
7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.
12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.
15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.
16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.
17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.
18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?
21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also
1 John 4
Those who are at all spiritually inclined of the post-orthodox-Christian indigenous population are probably more familiar with the Noble Eightfold Path than with the Old Testament.
This, bizarre as it may seem to those whose education in Christianity was more - doctrinaire, shall we say, follows from the pretty little Anglican educations we received.
So there was this God chap whom you praised, not because he demanded it or would punish you if you didn't, but because you wanted to, it welled up out of you, especially if you were a river, mountain or other geological formation. After 12 years of a sort of (wholly orthodox1) animism presided over by a wholly benevolent Creator, you left school. You might have gone to church. Unless you were totally thick, you'd picked up the gist at school. You didn't necessarily go to church in 18512 and you didn't necessarily go to church in 1951.
You'd been given the view that God/Jesus loves you unconditionally, no matter, whatever, that they were there for you. So intense in popular hymns is the sense of the personal relationship that it's almost surprising anyone went to church at all.
The way we were: Anglican England
Since we had all been brought up to believe religion was a pretty thing, exclusively about love, it really should not have surprised anyone that we became hippies.
Or that a Church that showed itself far from pretty, and apparently going to tear itself apart over whether women and gays could be priests, was largely deserted.
The Church might have decided to follow John Robinson, in which case it would probably have accommodated most of us. Instead it has shown itself a bunch of sexual neurotics happier in the Stone Age who have in fact now decided to dwell there with the like-minded of Islam.
The country is simply not interested in Islam as it presents itself. If that was the sort of thing we wanted, the Old Testament stands ready to receive our call. We don't want to know.
But, allowing for the possibility that God is far greater than organized religion professes, and permitting ourselves to see him as the essence of Life itself… the one who holds the universe together, sets order to things (even keeps our atoms from flying apart in a million different directions)… can free us from all that holds us back from a fulfilling life.
“Salvation” is not from hell, but from ourselves, and all the doubts and fears we’ve been indoctrinated into. Salvation is a freeing of the mind to live within all the possibilities, unlimited, and unfearing.
God is not angry with us, and he never was. He is with you always- in you, and all around you. You cannot separate yourself from Him, and He cannot separate Himself from you. You are one with Him, and always have been. Awakening to that can change your life incredibly.
YBMT
Jesus knew there was no separation from God
JD Salinger: Franny and Zooey
28There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Galatians 3:28
1. The country is not attuned to the Stone Age. I wonder why.
2. So far as it expects anything from the CofE, it expects it to uphold the NT theology of love, not ruminate about Abraham
3. What we have got rid of is being forced back on us thanks to a crude conspiracy of Church and State that ignores liberal religious people and rationalists and atheists alike.
The Christian churches generally present themselves as a closed-shop of those who can't cope with the modern world. Much is made of whether Muslim 'community leaders' in fact speak for all British Muslims. The greater problem is 'Christian leaders' presuming to speak for the indigenous population, all the while at one and the same time condemning us for not being sexually fucked-up control-freaks who can't cope with the modern world and claiming the 70% of the population who defined itself as Christian in the census believes what they believe. To them, their churches are empty because we're all spiritually lost. We are not all spiritually lost. We have merely gone past them, led funnily enough by the New Testament, left them to wallow in the ideals of the C10th, and so they wallow happily with the like-minded from other 'faith communities', monopolists clinging to a dead, static 'truth', their fear of what they call pick 'n' mix religion and the influence of Buddha and the Tao amply documented.
There is nothing they will not surrender to avoid saying the Qu'ran is incompatible with 1 John 4. Ah, pick 'n' mix religion! Theirs is of course the picking and mixing. That, presumably, is a bit they don't believe, doubtless preferring Deuteronomy.
5The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
11Thou shalt not wear a garment of divers sorts, as of woollen and linen together.
I hope you are fully aware of this, gentlemen. Orthodox Jews at least are generally consistent. BIble-bashing Christians just make themselves look ludicrous, jumping on Leviticus to condemn homosexuality and sinfully ignoring the numerous other prohibitions of the Old Testament.1
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness
There is no accommodation with whited sepulchres and a lot of people in this country can actually tell the difference between good and evil.
There is nothing they will not surrender.
There is, however, the figure of a Jewish mystic in the way, badly beaten, heavily scarred, long dead, but what is death? The young rabbi is a mega-problem to our 'religious leaders'. So what's new.
1 Fruit? How can you have uncircumcised fruit? It is possible that 'circumcised' means something different to what is generally accepted:Matt 23: 27 23And when ye shall come into the land, and shall have planted all manner of trees for food, then ye shall count the fruit thereof as uncircumcised: three years shall it be as uncircumcised unto you: it shall not be eaten of.
24But in the fourth year all the fruit thereof shall be holy to praise the LORD withal.
Leviticus 19
And it ‘s like this. I don’t give a flying fuck about laws made by traitors for slaves, laws grounded in gross falsification of history, laws grounded in outright lies, such as religion cannot by its nature merit loathing, which would well belong in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany
And it’s like this, I don’t give a flying fuck about their filthy fascist death-cults of obedience and there are no intellectual and moral standards requiring me to give a fuck about dirty stinking fascist death-cults, the commands of which contravene al intellectual and moral standards, no intellectual and moral standards demanding I accept reason be suppressed, women and gays be hit, et bloody cetera.
And it’s like this. However much you claim evil is good, lies are truth, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, a proportion of immigrants bring filth to England and are not wanted, and the filth they bring is slavery, the filth they attempt to impose is slavery, intellect and moral corruption, the suppression of fact and reason. Of course the pseudo-Marxist Left who may be readily dismissed en masse as mad drivellers, for the simple reason that they carol they are opposed to sexism, racism and homophobia and then clasp to their bosoms sexists racists and the homophobic when these are key elements of a religion. don’t mind, being rather good at slavery and intellectual and moral corruption themselves, Others, however, do.
And it’s like this, these are perfectly normal people, normal for citizens of the fascist unfree world.
And it’s like this the arrival on these shores of large numbers of persons with headsets worthy of solid citizens of Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany whose general attitude may be summed up as England, nice little place, needs doing up a bit, pity about the English, who think we’re free, we’re something that needs to be eradicated, a task to which the whole of the fascist fake Left has enthusiastically set itself. Since there cannot be anything wrong with for instance Iqbal Sacranie and must therefore be something wrong with those who loathe him, there cannot be anything wrong with his followers, taking their cue from the Islamic Republic of Iran, there cannot of course be anything wrong with those who take their cue from the Vatican.
And it’s like this, that’s easily done, we’ll depict them as racist and fascist and xenophobic for being free.
And if we dig a little deeper into this it is interesting, Polly Toynbee commented that the perception of the white working-class is that Labour is no longer interested in them. But more exactly Labour is not interested in anyone who is not a fascist and determined to impose fascism, because Labour is fascist and hates freedom. Do we suppose West Indian Baptists or Hindus peacefully bedding down thrill to their neighbourhoods being Islamist zones. Is this what they came to England for?
Thus too of course some Muslims, refugees from Iran for instance. Did the gorgeous Katy Kianush or the dad of Shappi Khorsandi
How about Peter Straker and Freddie Mercury?
Aw, guys, why don’t you just admit it? You hate art. Art is individualism, etc.
Did you know that ‘black flight’ is a recognized phenomenon? What non-white people who have succeeded professionally are flighting to suburbia from is not of course recorded, but if we think a doctor say of Muslim origin who works in a hospital that is not only multi-racial but multi-gender particularly wants to live in an environment that looks like a suburb of Karachi, let alone one that jubilantly declares itself a gay-free zone, I think we may be wrong.
To counter this Islamophobia of course was invented. Nothing is more ‘unacceptable’ than to say piece of sick filth such as Sacranie is not wanted on these shores, was not invited and if he does not like it should go away.
It is unexplained why England should have welcomed a creature who took his cue from the Islamic Republic of Iran and decided that forthwith England may only read and write that of which he approves.
Is Sikhophobia rife? Are there Royal Commissions on hostility to Buddhists, Jains, Hindus? Could there possibly be something revolting about how some Muslims behave? The ludicrously corrupt Left will not hear of it. It must be race.
https://www.panarchy.org/engels/eng.1884.html
Do you have a copy of The Origins of Family, Private Property and the State? I do, one of my father’s books saved from the wreckage. I can lend it to you, if you like.
And of course the first edition of The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism and Capitalism.
Feudalism preceded capitalism. Did you know that, Corbyn, McDonnell. It was Cousin’s Rodney’s particular field. I mean a society run by self-appointed feudal overlords, a society in which I am looked upon by sniggering animals much as the obedient serfs would have looked upon a lowly goat-herd who dared confront the lord of the manor, such a society is terribly yesterday, whatever one’s views on socialism and capitalism.
AROUND 50 YEARS BEFORE ARMAGEDDON CAME, HIS SINGLE HAND PORTRAYED IT...And Oscar was his name. But of course no-one pays any attention to poets. Left-wing fascism has killed about a hundred million people. You really are going to have to have your arses kicked into eternity, guys. You do not learn. Asa rule of thumb, the only islets of sanity on the Left are those of us with some kind of backdrop of Soviet Marxism.What was it Cromwell said? 'You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately ... Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.'
It is to be regretted that a portion of our community should be practically in slavery, but to propose to solve the problem by enslaving the entire community is childish…I confess that many of the socialistic views that I have come across seem to me to be tainted with ideas of authority, if not of actual compulsion.
Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community. It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment. But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed.
What is needed is Individualism. If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first
.Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right signification. What is true about Art is true about Life. A man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one's neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely stupid. Or a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realisation of his own personality; if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is the way in which everyone should live. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people's lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. Under Individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish, and will know the meanings of the words, and realise them in their free, beautiful lives
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891 ('A tinker out of Bedford, a vagrant oft in quod/A soldier under Fairfax, a messenger of God/Two hundred years and thirty ere Armageddon came/His single hand portrayed it and Bunyan was his name.')
And it’s like this, to whom am I totally unacceptable, a freak, a leper, crying because I want someone to care about what has happened to me, to care about what is happening to my lovely England, and no-one will and I laugh in your faces
Do tell, Blair, therefore, just do bloody tell England to whom I am wholly unacceptable, must be treated as a leper, destroyed mentally and physically.
The ‘new British’ come out of this no worse than that ‘old British’, and doubtless squirm and claim they took their cue from the likes of Linch and Goldstone and Naylor, but clearly are not here out of any overwhelming desire to live in the free world and would not dream of upholding a free and democratic country. As I have remarked the sample of the indigenous population is actually skewed by Jews and Catholics, members of minority religions. Linch may be Catholic, Goldstone certainly a Jew and Naylor probably just basic slum criminal who found he can run a successful Trust by espousing the mores of slum criminals.
And it’s like, when it’s payback time for what has been done to England, it must on no account be laid at the doors of immigrants, however vile their beliefs and conduct, but at the doors of the indigenous political and religious classes who rolled out the red carpet and refused to say, it’s a free country. If you don’t like it, go elsewhere, who used immigrants to try to destroy England.
And of course it’s like this. Do note some of the names, at the time this was written nonentities. Dear Mr McDonnell, it is not that they hold opposing views, after all you do too, it is that they insist England be run according to those opposing views. Breaks into howls of laughter. Just like you, in short. Do I suggest you leave? What an excellent notion. Frightfully unBritish, though. See below. Do we not have indigenous nutters without importing more? Why does your little Stalinist brain not grasp the difference between home-grown and import? This is my country and yours. It does not become the country of those who have newly arrived here merely become they have elected to honour us with their presence, not least because as I have freely observed in our wonderful NHS they call somewhere else ‘home’. I have no other home. That’s the difference, a little obvious, like everything else. Where do you suggest I go when you have quite finished turning England into a sewer in which a woman’s body is property and woman’s mind is joke, in which total intellectual and moral corruption are the norm, gross falsification of history. There are plenty of countries in which that is indeed the norm. Why do they not return there if those are their preferences, why bother me with their garbage? Free to come, free to go away again if they don’t like it.
British Marxists used to creep around in terror of distressing the holy, did they? Remember whom tha’s talking to, lad.
ComSymp, SovSymp, there were members of my family who would not have fared well under McCarthy, but this is
England. When I hurl the word ‘traitor’ around with apparent wild abandon, it should be seen in the context of total
acceptance of an Englishman’s right to gush over a hostile foreign power.
To not like someone's point of view is distinct from demanding he or she be silenced and only your point of view be
heard.
To campaign against views one believes erroneous or pernicious is distinct from demanding they be forbidden. One
accepts the right of others to hold their own views and seeks to instruct them in the error of their ways. The other
doesn't.
Without liberty, no-one would be permitted either to practise a religion other than that of the Church of England or to
have no religion. Muslims need freedom of conscience to be upheld. They do not gain fans by seeking to deny it to
others.
To seek to change the foundation of society from one where everyone has a right to his or her own views and so you a
have a right to your minority view to one where only you have a right to your views would not seem very bright for
there may surely be an awkward hiatus when those in power under the original system may shrug and say OK, you don't
think anyone else has a right to his or her views so why should you have that right, and pull the rug out from under you.
Some Islamists think to impose the new order by force. The Party I am sure would have loved to have a revolution but
you do need at least five people for that.
Like classical Marxism, Islamism entails a change to the foundation of society. Both of course point enthusiastically at
what everyone else calls a shit-hole and demands that here be more like that. If you are taking your cue from Saudi,
Iran or Pakistan, it is no different to taking your cue from the Kremlin. The fog of garbage concerning the supposedly
sacred nature of faith conceals this simple fact. Hey man, it's cool. No-one has to take any notice of people taking their
cues from hostile foreign powers. The problem comes from insistence that we do.
Pause to imagine some 30s Party member lecturing the British government of the day on Marxophobia. Well, you
know, I am a devout Marxist-Leninist and surely there can be no right to abuse the sincere beliefs of millions of people.
Marxists consider Comrade Lenin a towering figure, a giant among men leading the proletariat from darkness into light.
The rhetoric is appropriately similar: we want real democracy not sad corrupt old bourgeois democracy. We want proper
Islamic human rights not sad corrupt old Western human rights.
There are minor comments to be made, such as that in a world with vastly diminished communications, early
generations of British Sovsymps had no great grasp of ‘there’ but Shariasymps are clear what ‘there’ is like. Whether
either really wanted or want to surrender what they have here is moot.
Do you have a problem with inviting those who thought things were vastly better ordered in the Soviet Union to fuck
off and live there? I don’t, or only a personal one: chunks of my family might have been born in the USSR and family
get-togethers would have been a bit difficult.
To suggest people fuck off is distinct from insisting they fuck off and deporting them. Really, it would have been
frightfully unBritish to deport Uncle Richard or Cousin Rodney.
You didn't get hanged/sent down for 30 years/deported to Mother Russia for being an open SovSymp but for being paid
by the KGB to pretend you weren't.
The element of concealment is I think critical. If demanding the overthrow of the State were the key issue, 95% of 60s
students now fully paid-up members of the human race would have gone down (the other 5%, hmm). I think the exact
criterion would be working towards the overthrow of the State and its replacement with a system of government with
different foundations and pretending you want something compatible with the existing order.
Not surprisingly, the following in The Morning Star a couple of years ago caught my attention. I think Mr Howarth
should have spoken to a few Marxists before opening his mouth.
Leading Tory Gerald Howarth unleashed a poisonous torrent of hatred against millions of British people yesterday. He
declared that Muslims opposed to ‘the British way of life’ must leave the country, even if they are British citizens.
The Tory shadow defence minister said that people who saw the Iraq war as a conflict against Islam should be
considered as treacherous as Soviet sympathizers during the cold war.
“If they don’t like our way of life, there is a simple remedy – go to another country, get out,” said Mr Howarth, echoing
the fascist-type rallying cry of extreme right-wing leaders from the 1920s onwards.
Asked about people who were born in Britain, he replied: “Tough. If you don’t give allegiance to this country, then
leave.”
Mr Howarth, who is the Conservative MP for Aldershot, even compared those who despised the British way of life with
traitors who spied for the USSR….
Labour Representation Committee chair John McDonnell MP called upon Tory leader Michael Howard to condemn Mr
Howarth’s ‘outrageous xenophobic statement’.
Mr McDonnell added: “There is no room within a democratic political party in this country for people with this kind of
view.”
Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, who represents the ethnically diverse London constituency of Islington North, said that Mr
Howarth is completely out of touch with varied multi-ethnic nature of modern British society.
His dangerous ‘Colonel Blimp’ outburst would ‘foment discord between communities at a time when we need the
maximum solidarity of all ethnic and religious groups,” Mr Corbyn added.
Muslim Association of Britain spokesman Anas Altikriti branded Mr Howarth’s remarks as ‘absurd’ and contrary to the
principles of free speech.
Mr Altikriti said: “We have laws to deal with criminals and those who incite violence or hate.
“To suggest that those people who hold opposing views to ours should leave the country, that this would be some kind
of a solution, is absurd.”
Front page of the Morning Star, Thursday 4th August
If we consider, for instance, 'if you don't like our way of life, fuck off to the USSR', addressed to a British working-man
during the Thirties, we see, I think, the matter rests chiefly on what is not liked, whether most other people don't like it,
either and whether it is a failure to comply with the foundations of the existing order. Neglect of the poor and hungry
was not compatible with the teachings of Jesus and a lot of people said so. The name Keir Hardie springs to mind.
'Our way of life' in the context of the 30s must surely be a capitalist economy subject to market forces as a consequence
of which the workers may have a very hard time. Intellectually the matter rests on that quotation from Lenin I am
exploring, a somewhat succinct statement of the question:
The workers may secure a greater or lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation, but no
amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression until the power of capital is overthrown
VI Lenin, Socialism and Religion
What is required? Should it be obtained? Can it be obtained without some fundamental change taking place first? Or:
can enough of it be obtained?
'Our way of life' in the context of belief-systems may be summed up neatly as the freedom to be a member of the
Kremlin-backed Communist Party and get on with one''s little life. I have said I do not know if Richard and Rodney
had cosy little chats with the security services, but I do know that they were not otherwise harassed for their beliefs. I
also know from this obituary http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2002/jun/10/guardianobituaries.humanities that Rodney
was an officer in the British Army in WWII. For four years, such as between the autumn of 1941 and the end of the
war; the Nazi-Soviet Pact collapsed in June 1941 and I'm wondering if they allowed Rodney into the Army while it was
still intact but certainly I have found nothing about his being interned between 1939 and 1941.
The decision to move to a different country rests on the belief it will be better for you and you family than where you
are right now. If you don't like it when you get here, no-one is forcing you to stay. The great principle of the free
movement of peoples, which I uphold, is distinct from any specious requirement the country you have chosen to honour
with your presence roll out the red carpet, bow you in and hasten to change itself fundamentally in accordance with
your views. However, where you come from may be Leeds. Your parents and your grand-parents have bedded down
nicely and got on with their lives but you have decided Islam is insufficiently triumphant and you're going to change all
that. Fine, you're British. Why then should the rest of Britain treat you any differently to any other holder of a minority
view, or in short ignore you.
'A refusal to accept people may mock and criticize Mohammed is not compatible with the existing order in which the
indigenous religion was mocked and criticized, in which the frame of reference it gave to the whole of humanity was
demolished by Darwin. in which the entire system of government is founded on rejection of those who claim to know
God's will as overlords who impose it on a docile populace.
What is required is a society in which there is no criticism or derision of Islam. Should it be obtained? No. Can it be
obtained without fundamental change taking place first? No.
But that's OK because the politicians and clergy fall over themselves to create the fundamental change.
And it’s like this, anyone who claims that I, an Englishwoman, a British subject, is subject to the authority of the Church of Rome is immediately so far out of his or her depth as to be instantly drowned. The Queen, you will recall, is the Head of the Church of England, but of course that’s crazy, she being a woman.
And this of course:
Yes, I think I may be recovering my sense of humour, still laughing at the monstrous bloated penises and the women who suck them. What did I say, the laughing-stock of every writer, every artist, every historian, every classicist, every linguist, every philosopher, every graduate in English in the English-speaking world. Yup, Whelan, this means you. You shall take a crash course in evolution and learn the use of language, you shall take your penis out of your mouth and reason with women.
“Are you still laughing, Sarat?”
Karula tried to ring Kile, was told Kile was away and discovered ‘away’ meant a month’s cruise. Grandmamma’s enthusiasm for seeing the world in her old age was clearly undimmed. And why should she not! she had cooed at Mitch who having spent his life moving from continent to continent had seemed to think it strange his mother should decide to do likewise. Not if it means leaving Var-segan represented by our two delightful children. She rapped her knuckles. They are no longer children. They are young persons. Better they were children. OK, have it out with the man.
“Sit down a minute, Mitch.“ She grinned. “Hearken!”
“Hearken? Could this be serious?”
“Yes.”
He sat.
“Well?”
“You do not want to go back.”
“So?” he said calmly.
“Before you were merely close. You are now united in a bond – this presents practical issues.”
“Death or victory,” said Mitch.
“I also feel that way. It does not, however, include bringing our – our remaining children to Azt.”
“What then?”
“You will unnecessarily exhaust yourself commuting – really, there is no other word for it – between Var-segan and Azt.”
“On the other hand our children are nearly grown. We are committed to my standing for election. You have always known that should I be successful we shall be based in Azt.”
“I know I cannot stop – not yet, Mitch.”
“Our children have come out well from being carted around the world.”
“A little more carting will not dismay them? I do not have a plan.”
“We have so far – I do not quite know how we have so far but nonetheless we have so far and to our cost avoided dumping our children while we go off to war.” He took her hands. “We are not perhaps being entirely rational.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps in the rush of events we do not talk enough.”
“I wish to shield them from any inkling all is not well because they know all too well all is not well. How mad is that?”
“Sounds like motherhood to me. I’ll talk to Dill.”
“I tried to talk to Kile,” admitted Karula. “She’s away again.”
“How remiss of her,” murmured Mitch.
And so they flew home and Dill was summoned to Mitch’s study.
“Sit down, honey.”
“I rack my brains. I haven’t done anything more than usually bad for at least a month.”
“We have to have a little talk about the future.”
She frowned.
“Is that good or bad?”
“Good, honey, good. I hope good.” He walked over to her and picked up a soft emerald lock, let it fall gently through his fingers. “I love it!” He put his hands on her shoulders. “You have always understood our lives – all our lives – were to some extent at risk.”
“Well – yes…”
“Your mother and I are returning to Azt to live. There are arguments on both sides concerning what I have to say to you. You are Var-segan, honey, and your place is here, but – “ he grinned. “Look who’s talking! You may if you wish come with us. Azt is not for the moment the safest place. In order that your mother and I sleep at night, you will not be even mildly idiotic. Nor will you if you stay! Your mother thinks that if you are far from her eagle eye you may behave – inappropriately. I do not mean taking calls on your mobile during dinner! As I understand it, she does not wish to wake to pictures of you on a soap-box. You may say – we do say – that is rich coming from the pair of us. We do not wish you to make yourself more of a target while you are a minor. We understand, as – as Baya and Essa understand, as Pietri and Caluna understood, when you are an adult you will do what you have to do. Do you read me?”
She looked at him a moment, then gave a small, slightly puzzled smile and saluted.
“Yessir…Dad – is it going to get bad again?”
“There is infrastructure in place that should maintain Kadun’s stability. The possibility of chaos, the risk of chaos, I calculate as lower than at any time during the past ten years. The risk of individual casualties of course is something different. Among them may be me. You understand that. That is your worst-case scenario. On the other hand Kadun will come out the other end of this and we shall too.”
“What we think – Qirl and I. Now we’re older. We didn’t understand what you were doing when we were home before. They came for us. Now they want Sarat.”
“If I am elected, they will want me.”
“Oh! I see that.”
“You would hack it. You would have no choice.”
“You – you’re going back because you have no choice. It’s – what Var-segan means. I understand, Dad. Dad…If something happened, I mean if something really bad happened, if everything…”
“I should expect you to fight for the last stone and blade of grass. It is not going to come to that. It is something we have avoided to date. By sheer gall, by raw cunning – and by accommodation. There is no longer space for accommodation.”
“It wasn’t a game, Dad!”
“I do not understand.”
“The picture I’m getting – you and mom think I play at being a stoopid teen to – to pretend everything’s all right.”
He was utterly taken aback.
“That is not what we think, honey.”
“You don’t trust me!”
“We know too well what we were at your age. Perhaps that overly colours our judgement.” He put his arms around her. “I think I have not said anything of which you were not previously aware?”
“It’s my way of being brave.”
“Understood.”
“OK, I’m a loud-mouthed brat!”
“We love you all the more for it, honey.”
She suddenly went on the attack.
“And what you’re telling me – I can stay here and be Var-segan only I mustn’t actually open my mouth!”
He laughed..
“Did I say that? Would you not acknowledge that you are a little young to be a leader of revolution?”
“Old enough to be Var-segan.”
“I can’t have it both ways? I shall be frank. Parental dread can have it all ways.”
“This is coming from mom – if you became President, you would not think it appropriate to retain the title, you’ve said that.”
“If. That is not the immediate future. A year is a long time at your age.”
“I can be useful here. But you don’t want that. You are confusing me. I’m not stupid. I mean – that’s not the right word. I guess I seem arrogant? That’s what worries you and mom. But that’s confusing too. It’s what you say. You go out there and busk it.”
He grinned.
“Here I think myself the model of rational parenthood and I do nothing but sow confusion.”
“I’d ask, Dad. There’d – there’d be someone to ask. I mean it’s what you say. I know it already. I’m not saying I’m not a kid. I’m not saying I can’t be an idiot. I’m saying I – saying I know – knew – have known since I’ve been old enough to know something could happen to you and there’d just be me. I’m not claiming to be fit enough or old enough or responsible enough. I’m stating a fact. Just like you said. I’d hack it. I shouldn’t have a choice.”
He cocked his eyebrows.
“So why shouldn’t you hack it when you do have a choice? You are 16! You are claiming you want to be Steward of Var-segan?” The disbelief in his voice made her giggle.
“No! Not tomorrow, anyway! I’m – I’m trying to say - look at it this way. Just about every kid in Kadun is having this conversation! School! Homework! Exams! There’s a revolution going on and it’s our future.”
“I seem to remember a well-known young man dropped out…” He grinned again. “Not of course until he had finished school. Revolution? What revolution?”
“It doesn’t matter who you are, parental dread’s the same. Though broadly – this is still a very class-based society, you know! Posh folks take the real risks and – non-posh folk make the revolution, are free to make the revolution because posh folks are taking the flak. We talk about these things, Dad. We kids want to make the revolution and you – parents – want to keep us safe. If it’s not that they want things to be normal. Want us to behave normally while you don’t. It’s really unfair.”
“I am enjoying this,” said Mitch.
“You’ve always found time for us. We think you’re miraculous! When have you talked to our friends?”
“Would there be some measure of truth in saying be damned to the age of majority, you are adults, young adults, but adults nonetheless?” She nodded vigorously. “What exactly do you want, Dill? Do you all want, for assuredly Var-segan should take a lead in these matters.”
“To be part of the action.”
“OK. You’ll come to Azt, at least for a while. Accompany me.” He grinned like a fiend. “Mingle. Suffer gross sleep deprivation. Live on – and this is worst of all – the Hadin Wadud’s catering. There’s qallie soup, qallie mousse, qallie stew… “
He walked in on Karula fresh from the shower.
“Remove that towel,” he suggested. “It is unnecessary.” He laughed suddenly and picked her up.
“Unhand me, sir!”
“Not a chance…Just asserting myself in the face of two of the damnedest females…” He sat her on the bed. “Our daughter…” He laughed again.
“I gather it went well.”
“It went. Our daughter is entirely prepared to be at least nominally Steward of Var-segan. Like now, man. How old was Sarat? We are screaming idiots.”
“Hold on there!”
“You keep wriggling.”
“Sarat was not in Azt in his mid-teens!”
“Different scenario.”
“That is true. You are not seriously – “
“If I become President, I should not consider it wholly appropriate – have I not said that.”
“A retentive memory,” said Karula drily. “She is 16!”
“I am a miraculous parent. I know my daughter’s age. She has taken a deep breath and geared herself up to it. There is more! Every kid in Kadun is screaming because parents are having all the fun. It’s their future. They’ll come back with us, school be damned.”
“I see. I should prefer Steward of Var-segan.”
“That’s next week.”
“Talk me through it. Make it real good.”
After a bit, she said: “What happened to our young people’s revolution?”
“We never meant this young. Suddenly we are an open society. They are bombarded with news, events, change, innovation. It must be as though a party’s going on to which we have forgotten to invite them.”
“One with an unwanted guest.”
Much later she said: “She did not mention - ?”
“No.”
“She never does. I have been as inviting as it is possible to be without forcing it.”
“I did not think I had to ask why my daughter will hack it because she has no choice.”
Mitch sat down to dinner.
“Shouldn’t the ladies be seated first, sir?” asked Qirl. Karula choked and turned it into a cough.
Qirl pulled out a chair for Dill, who sat and thanked him graciously, then turned wide eyes on her father.
“Like we thought we’d been giving out the wrong messages, man.”
“Do you realize,” said Qirl, “we’ve never been to Azt! Talk about country cousins.”
The one with green fronds is the heir. Then the Cult released its video and Mitch’s madness was forgotten. Everyone with half a brain knew the exact taunt. Are you still laughing, Sarat? Sarat embracing Maya who turned into Death at his touch. Sarat placing Death on the Anile Throne and kissing his hand. Sarat making love to Death.
Not completely surprisingly, no-one wanted to show it to him.
“They have produced something past obscene,” said Faun. “We don’t think you should see it, but you must see it.”
Sarat watched it. Sarat said absolutely nothing.
At length, he said, “Thank you.” It was rather clearly a dismissal.
If I have any sense, thought Faun, I take my leave. I never had any sense.
“So?” Bloody stupid thing to say.
“Back to the cutting-room?”
Karula went up in smoke.
“Bring them to damn’ Azt! Young adults! There is more than one kind of safe, Mitch!”
Mitch was unmoved.
“It is a video. It is all over the Grid. I prefer they see it holding tightly onto our hands. Should they not face the enemy of their future?”
So much about him that was pure Fidubi. Jaizal sat cross-legged among the flowers.
Cantilip tried to explain something to Mel.
“We were mad. We were all mad. We thought we should bounce into Azt and they would evaporate like shadows in the sun. Is that what we thought, Mel?
“You are not leaving me,” said Mel.
She stared at him in horror.
“Mel…No! No.”
“What then? We cannot go back.”
“My duty is to fight. Is that not also yours?”
“Were we mad? Are we? Where does that lead, Cantilip?”
She closed her eyes.
“It is nonsense to think we can win.”
A girl came running into the room in tears. “They will hurt him! You must help!”
Sarat sighed but tried to be polite. He listened stunned. “You are Sheheela, my lady?”
The Star offered herself to him. He declined. She said Jaizal had sent her. He said Jaizal should have had more sense and thought fondly of the luxury flats over in Turnin.
He mailed Cho:
Aside from the more normal emotional and moral dimensions – what is the cosmic significance of sexual intercourse with someone from another time, pray? Supposing she became pregnant. At that point, I may say, I begin to titter madly. Supposing all this were in fact the consequence of my sexual relations with Jaizal’s favourite. Or some similar – trans-temporal alliance. To be here alone is…..Words fail me. With Maya – perhaps it was mad optimism or just madness to think we should make it a cosy family home. Together we were in charge. I gloss it: ‘it is getting worse’. The change (of course) is in me. I alone am dwarfed, overwhelmed by history. I have to overcome it.
So let us can the crap. There is no ‘rooted evil’. There is this asylum I have made my home where time is a flexible concept. The field of flowers has been planted. What does this mean? What I think it means is probably impossible but nonetheless theoretically what I think it means is the ‘five-headed ogre’ comes through time. The most obvious objection to this is why then has he not confronted me, doubtless dripping with gore. You have observed that Jaizal has been absent from my guest-list. His ladies, however, plural, have not. I have met Sheheela. She was petrified, but not of Jaizal.
She said: they are hurting him, you must help! She was very young, younger than I am. Cho – ‘they’ hurt him and the rest is history?!!? It is a little difficult to sustain a conversation when time keeps hiccuping. I should not go so far as to say he was a much-misunderstood guy, but there is something here that we do not understand and have misunderstood.
Jaizal must have the throne! Because the throne would heal/rescue/save him??? I have therefore done something right, bringing her here. But if she could – take him to the source of the rot to ‘slay the ogre’. Zani knew. I feel that in my gut on no evidence whatever!
Let us posit – the rot began with Kaminua, who tried to fight it, and ended with Jaizal, who also tried to fight it and was – overtaken. Three things obviously rocket to the front of my mind. One is the connection between the chair and the worm-hole(s). In which case she is ‘making it worse’. One is that the Cult predates Narulis, never mind Kaminua. Might we then say - do we not say - that the Cult realizes, immanentizes – that from elsewhere we call death? The third – there’s nothing about it in the records, but that might of course be because they didn’t know what it was, only what they thought it was.
Meanwhile there is gross national product and the cost of shoe-leather. I have not come – I did not come here to – what has happened to ME? Someone once told me I should remain Sarat. I admit to the occasional urge to vandalism, flatten the place and build a glass palace, but I do not of course, other considerations aside, think that would make a scrap of difference. Nor is it in some sense possible to move out. Did I not say I wanted to sort Kadun? I have got myself where I have to be. What’s that they say about being careful what you wish for in case you get it?
Oh dear, thought Cho. He padded off to the archives and was gone a long time.
“The continuum changes,” said Hass, “but we do not change with it. Is that not remiss?”
“Very slow,” agreed Venga. “Darling, stop that! I try to think!”
“You will forgive me if I do not rise,” said Jaizal wrily.
“I think you are safe there,” acknowledged Sarat.
Jaizal smiled and the sun rose, the sky became azure, the birds began to sing.
“You are Zani’s heir.”
“I hope not. That would be too confusing.”
“Crossed wires. Is that not what you say today?”
“I have wondered,” said Sarat. “What happened?”
“Shit happened,” said Jaizal.
“If of course you have no objection,” said Venga, “we’ve decided to move in.” There was something about Sarat’s laugh that made him raise his eyebrows. “Was it something I said?”
“There is someone I should like you to meet,” said Sarat.
He is gay, now sets up a menage a trois! That one, gentlemen, we had seen coming.
His Imperial Majesty’s houseboys. Alzani-Meta stands in the sun laughing.
A second video duly appeared. The Anile throne shimmered in ethereal light. Death approached it clearly wounded, repelled by the light, but nonetheless sat and crumbled to dust. Sarat appeared with a small vacuum cleaner and sucked up the crumbs, grumbling to himself about having to clean up the mess other people leave behind them. He sat and remarked, with a good deal of satisfaction, “This is my chair.” But suddenly he was surrounded by a pack of Deaths, all leering and generally trying to be terrifying. He settled back in the chair, yawned, and turned the vacuum cleaner on them. Their black robes blew up over their skulls and they groped blindly and tried to pull them down over their bony knees. Sarat laughed and adjusted the controls, sucked them all into oblivion.
Mel arrived in Azt like an arrow shot from a bow.
“My lord Jaizal, we must talk!”
The World This Week got itself in a mess over whether Sarat was top of its list of the world’s most eligible men. Frankly are the looks, the title, the wealth and the disposition worth trading your life for. People thought that could have been more tactfully put. Nonetheless, they were clear that it was unlikely Sarat would spend the rest of his life single – if he had a rest of his life.
We had not quite realized how Maya’s mere existence had informed the whole enterprise. Ah me, those gender dynamics. Although a number of things, of which decorum was only one, prevented every woman under thirty from visibly lusting, the sexual tension was there.
Ah well, if he did decide to give it all up, he could always become a rock-idol.
Consequently any woman identified as having been alone with Sarat became a target.
Including Karula. Including me.
AIt was all a bit obvious. He couldn’t have been consulting our lethal cutting intelligences, could he.
Droit de seigneur and all that. A healthy young man has his needs.
Karula and I plotted. Had we been single, we should have grinned and said, I should be so lucky! Had we been single, we should have hammed it up. Playthings of an idle hour (we should be so lucky). A little old, suggested Karula. Should I show them my stretch-marks? We were not single.
My Cioulis was promoted. Reward for services rendered. I thought I was going to go up in smoke.
“These people are such crap!” said Dill.
Mitch looked about to burst with fatherly pride.
But Jaizi said: “Consider it a diversion.” That was true. It was much better than people dwelling on exactly what had been Sarat’s mental state when Maya died. It had all been very quick of course, faster than it takes to tell it, but not so fast that the word ‘shock’ hadn’t been bandied around.
“We are going to send this up,” said Karula. “They seem a little confused as to who is paired with whom.” She explained our cunning ploy to the men. None of them said anything. “Do you think we’re making them nervous?” asked she in a stage-whisper.
“This lot?” I said.
Mitch gave a fairly undescribable smile somewhat like a hungry panther who has just been presented with a trio of fat calves someone has kindly caught, skinned, gutted, dressed and cooked for him.
Before we had the opportunity to put our poetry into motion, they targeted Dill. She had been brought to Azt to be presented to Sarat, gift-wrapped with a little bow and pink ribbons. Dill, bless her little green fronds, said she preferred boys her own age – yes, of course he’s everyone’s pin-up but he’s a bit old, isn’t he. That of course sent the slime-merchants off on how many boys has the little tart Known Carnally. We are good at grading slime and on the whole thought max 5/10 for that one.
aaDill: “Is this what’s called a propaganda war, Dad?”
Mitch: “No, I should not say that. This is what’s called wiping excrement off the sole of one’s boot.”
“You could not call this young lady beautiful. A strong, attractive face. Her mother’s features.”
Thanks a bunch, thought Karula.
“Her father’s colouring. Her father’s hair – we think. A young woman who will surely turn heads.”
“Is there a joke there?”
Cantilip flew in for a board meeting of something green and leafy, not NoZone, Trees R Us, I think it was. Hass greeted her as his delicate and fragile long-awaited bride. “Shall I swoon in your arms?” muttered Cantilip. “That might be over-doing it,” conceded Hass. He unwillingly released her hand. “Beloved, we must part!” cried Cantilip. Hass turned to the gulping assembled company. “There are people confused about who is paired with whom. We thought we should send them up.”
“Soap-boxes are taboo,” said Dill.
“Nasty, dangerous things,” said Mitch. “No child of mine would be so foolish as to be associated with them.”
“That does not mean I cannot have an idea.”
“I accept that,” said Mitch. “May I – dare I – ask?”
“Not yet,” said Dill.
Mitch caressed Venga’s cheek. Venga reached for his hand and clasped it. “Darling,” said Mitch, “it has been too long!” “A day without you!” said Venga. “An eternity of longing!” proclaimed Mitch. There was a great deal of gulping over that one.
At least His Imperial Majesty keeps himself aloof from these – amateur theatricals. Just looking for the appropriate angle, guys.
Cioulis stomped up to Sarat.
“I am not your partner!”
“That is exact,” agreed Sarat.
“How can you not be his partner?” demanded Karula. “I’m not his partner.”
“I thought it was me,” I said. “I’m definitely not your partner.”
“This is confusing,” said Cioulis.
Inevitably we evoked: And these lunatics are running Kadun? That wasn’t far below the surface anyway and Kadun was not suffering thereby.
Dill spent less time going around with Mitch and more time on the Grid. Researching. Karula groaned.
“I am sure you are investigating the formation of shale mindful that you will return to school.”
“What’s shale?” asked Dill and meant it.
“Back to school instantly!”
Dill returned to her terminal and later treated them to a short tutorial on shale.
“I have an idea. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. It’s pretty crazy. You said the reason for all the school stuff was – kids having normal lives was proof the revolution was working. I can see that. What I’ve been looking up is education policy. Throwing out old history books, teaching by argument. It’s cool. It’s like school in Zur. Even student representatives, that’s just normality, Dabida-style. We the kids need to be responsible for making something happen. All our boundless youthful energy is being wasted on shale! There’s a big class thing here too. Working-class parents now do complain if they think the teachers aren’t enthusiastic enough. It’s not just enthusiasm about teaching. It’s about the whole building and whether there’s hot water. It’s not parents who are affected. There was a case in Klisan. The school refused to replace the heating. There was frost on the inside of the classroom windows. School’s where everyone gets a chance, yes? There’s an absolute row going on over school catering. Is it an admission of defeat to say schools should provide maybe the only good food the kids are likely to get? I think there should be student committees in every school with some kind of real power to demand the things that affect everyone every day.” She borrowed a line from her father. “You are not yet screaming. That is good.”
“Is that all?” asked Mitch.
“No. That’s the sensible bit.”
“I shudder to think,” said Karula.
“The rest can wait. I haven’t finished with it yet.”
“I have no problem,” said Mitch, “with the basic thesis, which if I have it correctly is that even those younger than you can take responsibility for things within their immediate orbit, things they can understand. One does not require a grasp of geopolitics to grasp frost on the inside of the window.”
“I too do not dispute the basic thesis,” said Karula. “I note that equally everything that affects domestic life affects children but I see of course that conditions at school – I have always hated the expression ‘more uniquely’ – particularly, particularly affect the young.”
“What is your answer,” asked Mitch, “to whether it is an admission of defeat?”
“I think it’s twisting things. There’s a word for it you taught me and I’ve forgotten. Pretending things are connected that aren’t connected. Kids are at school all day and you can’t go all day without eating. Schools should provide good food, end of story. Home should too.”
“What is the unsensible bit? Briefly.”
“Laters!”
“Nows. I do not send you off to talk to Sarat without knowing the whole story.”
She made a moue and giggled.
“Sending them up. This is also known as winding up the straights.”
“A dangerous game.”
“Not if every kid in Kadun is playing it.”
“Less so,” allowed Mitch.
“Hi,” said Dill.
“Long time, no see,” said Sarat.
“My generation, we kids, are being left out of the party.”
“There are some nasty guests.”
“I know that,” said Dill. “That’s not a reason for doing nothing!”
Sarat laughed.
“You’re telling me?”
“I knew you’d understand,” said Dill. “Try thinking of me as Cantilip.”
Sarat passed the test.
“Gender is not relevant.”
“It has never mattered a hoot to Mitch that his eldest is a girl. You know how we’ve been around the world. OK, not in Zur! In the City, just about everywhere else, there are people who think there are some things girls don’t do.”
“Such as leading, taking responsibility?”
Mitch, this is not what you led me to expect!
“At first I didn’t understand. It’s because mom’s such a feminist she’s over-protective. What – what happened. It could have happened to me if I were a boy.”
“Yes,” said Sarat.
“I hate them,” said Dill. “For Baria, for me, for everything.”
“So you’re climbing the walls because no-one will let you fight.”
“Do something,” said Dill.
“I shot my mouth off in Zur,” observed Sarat.
“I’ve thought of that,” said Dill. “I don’t think that would be at all appropriate – “ Half-mocking. “- in the present situation.”
“True,” said Sarat.
“What is a girl to do?”
“I gathered you are going to tell me?”
“I thought, I don’t mind not being centre-stage. But I do want to start something.”
“Backroom girls can be the brightest,” said Sarat.
“Mom’ll love that. Sarat – emperors are different, right. You can say things you wouldn’t say to anyone else in the world, wild horses wouldn’t drag out of you.”
“There is a conception to that effect,” said Sarat.
“OK…Mom was a radical feminist when she was 12! Dad, I’ve told you. I am his heir, period, full stop, over and out.” She paused.
“I think I guess,” said Sarat. “After what happened, to you, to your family, you think that if you were a boy they’d understand that you want to take a machine-gun, but you’re a girl, so they don’t.”
“Yes,” said Dill.
“How d’you know they don’t?”
“All of you,” said Dill, “you – channel it - ?”
“Refract, channel.”
“I know my father. I know so far as certain people go, he is capable of – advancing and firing, just keeping on firing until all the rats are dead. Instead he – you – mom – all of you – you talk, you joke.”
“The enemy is not – in a neat little army flying a separate flag.”
“Until they’re on your doorstep!”
“There is nothing about Karula at that time or any other that suggests to me she would fail to understand.”
“This may be a bit complicated for one of my young years but – couldn’t that be the point?”
“Tell me what you think, feel, hope, fear. Do not ask me to analyse your mother.”
“Sorry. But how do you separate - ?”
“It’s called growing-up,” said Sarat. He grinned. “Tell me about it! Dill – all of us, Mel, Hass, Maya, I, we took a one-way express ticket to adulthood. That much I understand.”
“You must miss her terribly. Tell me if you think that’s a pathetic thing to say because it’s so obvious.”
“Not pathetic. Just obvious. Thank you.”
“I still miss Baria. If I can’t talk about mom to you, whom can I talk to? You expect me to find an analyst, no doc, it’s not me I want to…”
Sarat bit his lip.
“I didn’t say I wasn’t willing to listen to you talking about Karula. I said don’t expect me to tell you my view. Mitch. Karula! My lady of Var-segan, do not tell me you cannot talk to your mother!”
“Of course I can talk to my mother!” She sounded quite irritated. “We’re too close. I know what she thinks. I know what I think. What I need is what someone else thinks.”
“Perhaps I’m too close too. There’s an elderly gentleman in Fidub with a lot of practice talking to mad teenagers. Would you like to talk to Cho?”
“That would be fantastic! Thank you!”
“I bypassed my parents,” said Sarat. “Oh, I rationalized it. Head of the family and so on. We were just too close. The hard thing wasn’t telling Essa what I wanted to do. It was telling him I hadn’t talked to him first.”
“I did talk to Mitch. Not the same scale. There’s just the one thing, do you see, but it’s everything.”
“That is obscure.”
“I love them to pieces. I don’t want consent or grudging approval.”
“That is more obscure.”
“I’m trying, Sarat. There’s a phrase, OK. You should know! Is Sarat taking people with him on this? I want to take mom and dad with me. I want them to understand where I’m coming from.”
“I want to understand that,” said Sarat.
“Writhing around on the floor enslaved by the fucking Cult.”
“You don’t have to try to prove you’re grown up to me.”
“In that case you may be the first intelligent person I’ve ever talked to. Yes, I know that it is a gross slander!”
“Dill – you’re trying to tell me that is not obvious to Mitch and Karula?”
“Yes but not how it sounds. OK, obscure again! Supposing something really awful happened to you when you were just past puberty! You’re not sitting there with neato grown-up explanations of what you feel…It’s like – what you said. Death does not sit on the Anile throne! But – people see that as a boy’s reaction, d’you see. Not a reaction a girl could have had. It’s not on their screen, Sarat.”
“I do see.”
“I was totally – taken over. It’s not I had a will to resist. Something in me that – was resistant. Mom worries they scared me. That and my – sexual health. Scarred, scared. It’s all on a different planet.”
“Then why don’t you say so!”
“Because I don’t know how to ask my mother what it’s like to kill!”
“Ah. You know what I’m going to say.”
She sighed.
“I have to talk to them! I’m sure your parents are brilliant, loving, rational people and my parents are brilliant, loving, rational people. Do you understand what I mean by caught in the parental head-set?”
He burst out laughing.
“Of course!”
“Right! Somewhere I’m lisphing my first words. I did manage to explain some of it to Mitch. It doesn’t come out right.”
“I’m going to ring,” said Karula
Mitch hooted.
“His Imperial Majesty would not have sent our daughter home in the hands of a cowboy minicab-driver who has abducted her.”
“That or worse!” said Karula.
“Be a bit sensible,” said Mitch brusquely.
“OK, that was out of court! Mitch, it has been five hours, what are they doing?”
“For a start,” said Mitch, “we do not know that ‘they’ are doing anything. He might have been called away and she willing to wait.”
“Then she should have called!”
“I really do not think it would occur to anyone except you that she was not in the safest place in Kadun.”
“Plotting,” growled Karula. “That is what they are doing.”
“An old family tradition,” said Mitch.
Dill arrived back looking radiant.
“You had an interesting time, honey?”
“I had a fantastic time. We just talked and talked and talked.” Oh dear. “Sarat says I should talk to Cho. Lots of experience with mad teenagers, girls a specialty.” That sounds better.
“But you found plenty to talk about!”
“He said backroom girls can be the brightest. I said you’d love that. Honestly, mom, this is not about making the six o’clock news! It’s about making a difference.”
“I understand that, honey.”
“What’s next?” asked Mitch.
“He’ll take the school thing where it needs to go. No credit, no come-back. IF it has your approval, he’d like me to just keep mingling, build up a network of kids who want to make a difference. He reckons that would stay below the radar. I gave him some names.”
“The leaders of tomorrow,” said Mitch.
“How about the sending-up?”
“T-shirts with Sarat and a vacuum cleaner may just be coming in vogue. Beyond that, no, or on stage by people who can handle themselves. He would not forgive himself and I quote if some bunch of well-meaning kids got hit because he’d given the green light.”
“I fear,” said Karula, “I cannot readily see anything to which to object.”
“You just became a plotter,” said Mitch. “Welcome to the club!”
“We’ve got so much in common,” said Dill. Eeek! “He understands about an express ticket to growing-up. He pointed out he was in Zur and I said, yes, I’d thought of that, of going back, but I didn’t think it was appropriate.”
“I am most relieved to hear it,” said Mitch primly.
“I am now going to be very brave and very honest. When you hit the roof, you will at least give me credit for my noble, open nature.”
“Possibly,” said Karula.
“I did ask first. The emperor is someone you can say stuff to you wouldn’t say to anyone else in the world. I said there was something, one thing, I had trouble talking to you about.”
“Indeed?”
“He said – he said the hard thing wasn’t telling Essa, it was telling Essa he’d talked to Cho first.”
“What it is you want to do?”
“Talk about Baria. Talk about what happened to me. What it means to me.”
“Honey!” squealed Karula.
“Oh dear,” said Mitch. “If I just put my arms around the both of you….”
“I have tried to get you to talk! I thought I had!”
“You were – “ Fluency momentarily failed her. On another planet. She managed to soften it. “A different wavelength.”
“Come on, team,” said Mitch, “onto the sofa. I am a big guy and you are not too old to sit on my lap though you may be too big….OK…We’re listening, honey. We really want to understand.”
“I said mom was a radical feminist when she was 12!”
“Well, 13,” murmured Karula.
“I said I knew it had never made a scrap of difference to dad that his heir was a girl.”
Mitch frowned but only with trying to work out where this was going.
“And?”
“But you still didn’t understand! If I was a boy, you’d understand.”
I have to hear this, thought Karula. I do not think my radical feminist brain wants to hear this!
“Tell us, honey.”
“Wanting to kill. It’s more complicated than that. Sarat pointed out it’s not like the kind of war where the enemy has one bit of land and you have another. You – he – all of you, you – ‘you too have suffered terrible loss’,” she mimicked viciously, “and pain and anger – but you do something. Make it positive.”
“You’re just a kid,” said Mitch, “you don’t have those big, dangerous grown-up emotions. It would help if I shot myself? No, I thought not…”
“Maya, honey,” said Karula.
“I grew up,” said Dill, “the day I was on the drawing-room floor. I’m not saying I understood what I was feeling or I could express it, that it was - all laid out on the top of my mind. Maya’s death kind of - crystallized it. Something resisted. I didn’t have any control over it or anything. Like a little – core.”
“You do not do this to me and live,” said Mitch.
“Just so,” said Karula.
“I’m still a virgin,” said Dill, “but I think I’m sexually normal.”
“There is,” said Karula, “more than one kind of - big, dangerous, grown-up feeling. I got it half-right.”
Dill kissed her.
“It’s because you killed them.”
“I do not follow that.”
Mitch hazarded: “It would have been – more raw, more open, more on the surface if it were not a closed case.”
“You don’t talk about it,” said Dill. “What it feels like to kill, even rats.”
“My dear, darling daughter,” said Mitch. “We have just not kept pace.”
“One minute it’s the story of the little green donkey…”
“We went there,” said Dill. “It’s just parents. Somewhere you’re Grandmamma’s little boy.”
Mitch grinned.
“That is true.”
Karula lay back in bed her hands clasped behind her head.
“I am not filled with remorse because I understand that this is a fast moving train. I am not even contemplating the deeper levels of my consciousness. One word fills my mind: soul-mates.”
Mitch guffawed.
“Gee, honey, they can really talk to each other. I am sure that for the moment at least he regards her as another sister.”
“That is a good thought,” said Karula enthusiastically. “Nonetheless I think I have developed a recurring nightmare. It goes what is a vast gulf in age at 16 – what is supposedly a vast gulf in age - is diminished at 18 and annulled at 20.”
“Alas,” said Mitch, “I shall be President and she will be Mistress of Var-segan. I knew you’d warm to the idea.”
“They are the same mix,” said Karula. “Southern radicalism and irtubi tradition. That is your fault!”
“I am sure there are many other young women closer in age in whom the two are combined.”
“But they are not part of the plot! That is a question on its own, all other considerations aside. Does that not above all limit the field?”
“He will not be in a hurry,” sighed Mitch. “He will want, as we all do, a safe and stable Kadun.”
“Meanwhile,” said Karula.
“There are places I do not go,” said Mitch.
“Hass was his first love.”
“You will not convince yourself that Sarat is gay, tempting though the idea is.”
“What is a child?” demanded Karula. “Perhaps I mean, when did Sarat become a man?”
“The day he drove into Kadun. Because he had no choice.”
“That is an interesting reflection. It is so much a matter of will?”
“There is a kind of no man’s land, a transitional stage. Childhood ends when this dubious state is achieved!”
“He has a thousand things to think about besides our daughter. Nonetheless, I find it reassuring to think he did not retire to an empty bed. There are two things. I shall put aside my nightmare and be intensely rational. One is that if Sarat could hear this conversation he would undoubtedly think us raving mad. As you say, a fourth sister. Of course they talked easily. No, three things. The second, being intensely rational, to whom should I prefer my daughter lose her virginity, some pimply lout who will kiss and tell? The third of course is that Maya’s fate is for the moment a remarkably efficient passion-killer. The future is another place. No young woman I think will in this now be carried away in a romantic haze of happy ever after.”
“I love you,” said Mitch. “Because of course – “
“Because of course it is far more likely she will fall in love with him than that he will fall in love with her.” She rolled over onto him suddenly. “We said we weren’t going to have any more. We said – we said three was enough. Since then we have not stopped to think about some things.”
Sarat retired to an empty bed and thought a lot about Mitch’s daughter, but not, Karula would have been mightily relieved to learn, in any kind of romantic or sexual way. He thought about her pain and anger and found it better than thinking of his own. He thought about it as though she were family and indeed (Karula would have been in seventh heaven) thought he felt how he’d feel if it were one of his sisters. Then he thought about Mitch and Karula and felt an intense anger that he hadn’t (yet!) been able to stop it, but reined himself in on the grounds that that was in part an unproductive thought and in part his normal state of mind. He drifted off to sleep thinking of Maya. Karula is the last person anyone could describe as heartless. She just doesn't fully understand the Sarat-Hass-Venga thing.
Dill went out with a few guys her own age and found them immature. This of course fed the nightmare but Karula regained intense rationality mode and recognized it for what it was, simply the consequence of the express ticket. Some nice stable young man a couple of years older. Sure, Karula, and they’ll live happily ever after in a cottage with roses round the door. Sadly, she dismissed the nice stable young man as a fantasy.
There was something Dill wanted to ask Sarat so she rang him up. They continued talking long after he had sensibly answered her sensible question.
“Hey, we click!” she said to Mitch.
“Sounds good,” he said. “Who’s we?”
“Me and Sarat.”
“Sarat and I,” said Mitch.
“It’s like having an older brother.”
Galvanizing one’s fellow kids is something one can only do as a kid oneself and Dill is growing up rather fast now and also becoming more introspective as she learns about the other matter. At the ripe old age of 17 she said: “I’ve worked through it. May I go back to school now!”
“Naturally I am delighted you - ?”
“In Zur,” she said rather urgently.
“Is there anything you would like to tell me?”
“It’s not serious. Hey, it’s OK to go to school!”
“Now that’s an about-turn! It’s OK to – be normal?”
“I can never be that! It’s OK to behave normally. It’s even what the whole thing’s about. I’ve been really trying to think. All of us, it’s like we’re in two worlds, the old and the new. There are things we’d do – no, have to do in the old and things appropriate to the new.”
“And if you’re 16 it can be hard to work out which is which! Or 36 or 50!”
“Right! On one hand, we’re fighting a war centuries-old and on the other we’re living in a modern democracy, or about to be, a free country, anyway. I do not have to be a major figure in anything when I’m not even 18, really I don’t! I’m not going to have much chance to be just part of a crowd. I have friends in Zur. I have friends in Var-segan. I don’t have to worry I’m not being grown-up enough in Zur. I don’t know if that says it right? Like being a hothouse-plant? Only it’s been me forcing my growth. Do you see what I mean? Yes, there’re all the obvious outside things but – I guess because of them? It’s been me trying to make myself. And all the other stuff. I told you, I’ll hack it if I have to. I don’t have to.”
Dare to believe, thought Mitch. Dare to believe we all have a future.
“My daughter is turning into a most interesting young woman.”
She kissed him.
“Thanks, dad!”
“If that is Sarat’s influence,” mused Karula, “may there be more of it!”
“He cannot allow himself to have regrets.”
“There is not a parallel between the instigator of the revolution and one caught up in it.”
“Maybe that’s what he told her!”
Cantilip found Dill a nest in the rabbit-warren. She applied herself to her studies. Any time she wanted an update on the revolution, Mel was happy to oblige, until the election campaign was all over the world’s news, anyway.
Analysts in fact divide the period into the election campaign and the pre-election campaign. The pre-election campaign started as soon as a date was set. I suppose you could say that. You could also say it started the day Sarat entered Kadun. Political parties had sprouted, as people worked out what they felt about it all. The main opposition to CLIK came from A New Alternative. ANA were clear in their commitment to capitalist democracy (and of course maintained CLIK wasn’t, but CLIK had genuinely changed), but stood for a slower, more traditional way of doing things, which tended, although they had female candidates, to mean women in the home and gays with a lower profile, kids more docile. Since they were political innocents they got rather severely nibbled by the banks, so they split. Others raised the capacity of the State to ensnare rather than liberate. Some were single-issue parties, nationalists, women, the environment. In all there were nine parties with any significant following and two major divisions. One was gender politics. The other was state provision.
I am standing here in a wind-swept corner of Vaudos witnessing yet another round in what is probably the dirtiest election campaign the world has ever seen!
And it hasn’t even started yet!
The stage has been set for this, we have to remember, censorship went out of the window the day Sarat entered Kadun. People have consistently been invited to say exactly what they think. Consequently, smear, slander, innuendo are rife.
But confronting it is reality, the sheer experience of change. Bedrock remains what has been achieved by the sheer hard work of the Workers’ Committees at grass-roots level – and by their unflinching backing from the top! It does not matter – I trust! – how often people are told Sarat eats babies – what you know is you eat better, your kids have shoes. Broadly what has happened here is that Kadun’s class war has realigned. Whereas previously we had – thought we had – all other sections of society crushing the working-classes, now we have the workers, the intelligentsia, and of course the aristocracy on one side and a load of people in the middle who feel more or less threatened thereby.
I think we need to be clear what we mean by ‘aristocracy’. Let’s be exact, it’s a handful of people part of an ancient feudal system!
And one or two real old families. Eban-tole!
That is true but my point is there is a caste which likes to think itself aristocratic and who indeed to us common folks would seem aristocratic which are very much not part of the revolutionary trend. .
Let us face it, we expect this election to be rocked by blasts.
I have wondered about that. The tragic truth is that terrorism has consolidated the revolution!
Even the smears, gross as they are, only recycle the garbage we heard before Sarat entered Kadun.
And ever since! The radicalization of the working-class, particularly on social issues, is most certainly to the credit of CLIK, but we cannot forget it is equally to the credit of Micheal and Karula ban-sarndit-vaq, Mel Talal!
Hasiyata Talal! I mean it’s incredible. These are people who two years ago beat up gays.
I was talking to a man, a gay man, who said, no, it was more subtle than that. The dominant ideology gave free rein to gay-bashers and others thought it wise to keep silent. As we know, the dominant ideology changed!
Dill considered returning to Kadun, but really, she said disparagingly, this isn’t the sort of superficial farce they hold in Harn, all about kissing babies. This isn’t about Mitch’s and Karula’s beautiful children, it’s about what people have done. Early polls showed people thought Mitch had done a lot.
“Ask you something?” she said to Cantilip.
“Sure!”
“What really does it mean, ‘emperor’s steward’, in the context of normality? I mean, when has Kadun been normal! I know my – duty if things went pear-shaped. That’s worst-case scenario.”
“I think you mean the rule of law,” said Cantilip.
“That’s it. If you actually don’t have to protect people.”
“It’s a good question. To me it’s about keeping communication open, communication with the emperor. Remember we’re running on the same rules! Anybody can go to Sarat. Someone in Var-segan would find it easier to go to you. The rule of law is great. Law can become bureaucracy, people getting tangled in red tape.”
“Being prepared to cut the crap,” said Dill
“Do I hear an echo of Mitch’s dulcet tones!”
“Not much different, really! A parallel government, that’s what I heard on the radio. I rather thought it was true.”
“I take it it wasn’t particularly positive.”
“A threat to our fledgeling democracy.”
“Drivel,” said Cantilip. “An assurance people will be heard.”
A major – oh, all right, a mega – row then blew up over the army. It is unthinkable to those of us who believe in a real democracy that the ‘Imperial Army’ be accountable only to the emperor.
Who said that? said the army. Did you say that? I didn’t hear anyone say that.
It was formally clarified by someone who just managed to keep a straight face that of course the army was the servant of the state.
Right, man! Until it decides not to be.
Challin said: We serve the people of Kadun, being the people of Kadun. It is our role, our duty and our honour to ensure the proper conduct of this poll. There would appear to be certain elements who do not care for the notion they may not terrorize the electorate!
It’s a big problem for them, yawned Faun, not being able to rig the ballot because a thoroughly deterrorized populace would scream the roof down to the nearest guy or girl in khaki.
If all is well, pointed out someone, trying to be soothing, the Crown and the State are synonymous.
Mitch said: “To just reiterate, the three heads of the people are the Crown, the State and the Constitution, the law. Should one go haywire, the other two remain. As well to say it is a threat that the courts may command the army. Let us cut to the chase. If the Imperial Army were a threat the country would be under martial law and there would be no election.”
“Point taken! Someone has to be C-in-C!”
“That is Sarat,” acknowledged Mitch.
“What is really the issue is whether the army is a law unto itself.”
“You got it,” said Mitch. “Try the servant of democracy.”
“It could uphold counter-revolution.”
“It could. That is true, however, of any nation under the sun. I ask you to consider who has toiled day and night to make our revolution work! Apart from me, of course.”
“Lovely sense of humour,” said Qine.
Dill got into an argument in the Saa’nda Senta.
“In the first place, if you feel so desperately strongly about Kadun, why aren’t you in Kadun?” A couple of people who knew who she was choked quietly into their beer. “In the second place, you obviously don’t know a d –arned thing about Kadun. Why are you standing here talking such rubbish?”
The orator gaped.
“And you are who?”
“Mitch’s daughter.”
Couple of wolf-whistles.
“Never have guessed!”
“So you think perpetuating a feudal system that was out of date ten centuries ago is rubbish! ‘Course you do, love. Your privilege comes from centuries of the sweat of the working man, from exploitation, from deference. Yessir nosir three bags flippin’ full, sir. It went out with wearing skins.”
Dill realized she was unspeakably angry and did her best to control it.
“My privilege lies in being assaulted by the Cult, my privilege lies in my dead sister, in watching my mother kill. Maya’s privilege lies in being dead. Sorg’s privilege lies in being dead. Let me tell you about my family’s privilege. It means sticking our necks out century in, century out, to defend the working man. No-one’s denying it wasn’t democracy! It was a hell of a lot better than whingeing in the safety of Dabida! You’re just a fake. Ask Qine about Mitch’s privilege!”
“CLIK’s sold out, everyone knows that! Bought and paid for.”
“And you’re not?” shot back Dill.
“That is a very serious insinuation.”
“Oh gosh,” said Dill.
“Well, what are you doing here!”
“Enjoying the last fleeting remnants of childhood until I take over Var-segan when Mitch is elected! That was the theory.”
“You? My fine lady Var-sega’?”
“Me. You have a problem?”
Although attacking Qine and Mitch is not the way to Zur’s heart, Zuri have strong stomachs for the –er, cut and thrust of political debate, and now they started to enjoy this.
“I expect it’s the hair!”
“Mitch never looked like that!”
“She’s nothing like him, is she!”
The orator got a word in edgeways.
“And all the little pezzies will bow and curtsey. What’s a stupid little tart like you ever done to earn respect?”
“You are a moron,” said Dill. “Somewhere in all this, I had a talk with another stupid little tart. She’s generally called Cantilip. Because we are not morons, we actually talked about what it all means when Kadun is a democracy. It means what Alzani-Meta means. That’s what it always did mean. Did and will. Kadun’s bigger. It means keeping the line open to the Crown. If you want to stand in the middle of Zur and challenge the outmoded feudal system that is Alzani-Meta, you be my guest! I’ll just enjoy.”
“’Course she can’t be Mitch’s daughter!”