Many of us have been clanging the alarm that the rot in our institutions would eventually lead to a national crisis and as 2025 dawns, it appears we have well and truly arrived at this point.
I couldn’t agree more but given the deliberate programme of ‘Common Purpose’ which has permeated our institutions i doubt anything will change in my lifetime. Deeply saddened by the state of my beloved country.
I first encountered that organisation 20 years ago and was invited to join - I informed them that I thought their project was a slippery slope to fascism - the collusion of state and business, the politicisation of institutions and wold result in groupthink which would destroy our society by increments.
Perhaps another symptom of moral disintegration is the rise of careerists who value their career progression over the values or the organisation? It's easy to ignore organisational failures when your eyes are on your next promotion, the next career achievement.
There's a lot of sense in 'The Way Forward'. If I had to pick one item as the most important it is naming and shaming leaders who fail to act. Tricky in today's litigious world but a good journalist should be able to pull it off, and exposing gutless executives to public censure is a social punishment for dodging responsibilities.
Also the rise in the 80s of the MBA. This is pure Managerialism. Saw it in the space industry in the UK and Europe. No one takes a risk or keeps taking risks but creates a tentpole project instead. Why? Well that gets bums on seats.
And we wonder we Musk has eaten people’s lunch in this regard?
Because of their scale, the handling of the rape gangs and Post Office issues are surely the most obscene things to happen in Britain.
The former represents the death of trust in British policing. The latter the death of trust in our government and broader establishment.
Police officers take oaths to uphold the law. Any officer operating in those northern and Midland towns would definitely have known what was going on and who was doing it - yet they not only stood by and allowed brutal obscenities to be perpetrated, they actually persecuted the kids and parents themselves. Chief constables and divisional commanders issued unlawful orders to their officers - who in turn did not have the cojones to disobey them.
The Post Office issues are in a way even more disturbing in that supposedly educated and respectable people in positions of authority and responsibility, perpetrated lies for years that resulted in decent, hardworking people being stripped of the money, reputation and freedom. The government was complicit too, because from 2010, it was a shareholder and two senior civil servants sat on the board.
Yet NOBODY is being held to account for either outrage........and probably never will be.
All one needs to know about the depth of institutionalised incompetence, corruption and moral torpor is that the former Archbishop of Canterbury wanted to make Paula Vennells the Bishop of London; whilst Labour made a northern 'community leader' and rapist a peer.
That is the state of 21C Britain after 25yrs of Blair-like politics from both parties and our public servants.
The new administration in USA is taking great steps towards cleaning things up - the will to do similar here does not exist.
Covid did it. The first "in the open" experiment in "what will the people put up with?"
The result. They will comply with all they are told to. They'll take an experimental gene therapy jab, authorised as an emergency and way off the completion of even first phase clinical testing) without so much as a "I don't want to".
Fair play to all those who said no, and lost their jobs. In their cases, the Nuremberg Code was broken and nothing happened.
We hanged people who did this during the war. Now? Nothing.
The only consolation is that this Labour government is so so bad (recommended - David McGrogan's stack, "News from Uncibal" - today's post sums up HOW FUBAR we are, but that there are signs of movement in the right direction.
God willing. At 73 I never thought I'd be called to the barricades, but if needed, I'll be there; or at our local farm gates, brandishing a pitch fork.
The expenses scandal of 2012 the first explosion in front of us, the great unwashed, followed in 2016 by the patent attempt by the House to scupper Brexit, with our sociopath leader spending two years trying to overthrow the referendum.
And a state that allows a party for whomp one in five voted to get such a huge majority has had it. I am no fan of PR, and FPTP has worked well - but that's buggered now, as many se no point in voting anyway.
God will that the second American Revolution takes place, and that Trump, who has the power to wound psych Starmer fatally, does so.
my latest article looks at the chilling impact the assault on freedom of speech has had on political participationhttps://open.substack.com/pub/cjstrachan/p/in-the-uk-the-current-default-is?r=3leiou&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
The people at the top support people like themselves. They close ranks, exclude the objectors, trouble-makers, independent thinkers. If this wasn't so then there would only be hobbyists writing articles here on Substack and I'd be watching the BBC News.
I don't see any way to hold anyone to account because nobody is responsible for anything and any telling off that goes on is done by the same class of people. I don't see Matt Hancock, for example, being held to account for any of his poor decisions during the pandemic. He just walked away. Paula Vennells isn't being held to account for the Post Office fiasco - a bit of public weeping and off into the sunset with her. Chief Executives of hospital trusts, police forces, county councils simply move on to a new part of the country or move sideways into a different area of "public life". I mean - Tony Blair is still walking the earth as a free man!
There does not appear to be a way of holding anyone to account for anything.
Unfortunately I suspect you are correct. The only possible remedy will be if change is forced on us through economic necessity. If the markets demand it.
I'm deeply Sceptical about whether this would happen until we were a total basket case as Argentina was.
And Argentina was a basketcase for absolutely years. My husband's family lived in Peru after the war. His father believed strongly in showing that he had confidence in the country he lived and worked in and so kept his money in Peru. His uncle had no such confidence and kept his money in US dollars outside the country. His father lost the lot in the early '70s when the government changed and threw the foreigners out. Ironically, his uncle lost the lot when the oil crisis hit a few years later and there was a run on the dollar (or maybe it was something Jimmy Carter did? I wasn't there!). So, I would advise keeping an eye on whether people carry on keeping their money in the UK or not as we slide into being a third world basketcase country.
As an Anglophile American, I have always admired British culture and history. Watching Britain’s slow-motion suicide is like seeing my mom being raped to death but being too far away to intervene. Not that things are all that great here in the USA, but at least we don’t (usually) get arrested for memes. Your migrant problem is even worse than ours. You need a militantly pro-white, pro-Christian, nativist movement to take back control from all the foreign scavengers feasting on your nation’s corpse. Best of luck to you.
I think the inability of children’s services, schools and the police says more about the defunding and hollowing out of local services by the tories than it does group think. It wasn’t primarily about anxiety about being seen as racist but the capacity to support children and families across a range of risks despite the efforts of many professionals at all levels.
I left England at age 40 and have lived in the States for the last 34 years. Growing up in England when people in positions of responsibility and politicians resigned when found to have indulged in criminal or morally reprehensible behaviour was the norm. Who the hell resigns these days? And that’s true on both sides of the Atlantic. We have allowed the rise of a class of professional politicians most of whom are venal and corrupt alongside an ever growing army of apparatchiks not subject to oversight or accountability. The permanent state has become a self aggrandising and self perpetuating entity living entirely separate lives from the mass of the population upon whom they are dependent for funding. Inevitably this will reach critical mass where there are not enough people leading productive lives and paying taxes to fund the parasitic bureaucracy sucking their blood. At that point the entire structure collapses.
I'd suggest that the principles of DEI are not important. They are divisive, racist, anti-meritocratic (if there is such a word) and drive conformity of thought, the very thing you rightly decry.
They lead to the disadvantage of those they are supposed to help, where you end up thinking "Is this ethnic minority Doctor treating me here because he's competent or because he filled a quota?" That's not a thought I want to be having, I don't care what colour a person is, I want to be able to trust they are where they are because they are competent.
There's been some research done in the US that demonstrates that DEI policies have the opposite effect of what they are supposed to which is, of course, no surprise to anyone with half a brain.
EDI is toxic and there is sound research demonstrating how catastrophic it has been in the UK especially in the workplace. I cite this evidence.
The article isn't aimed at you, you're not the audience, you understand the problem. The article is aimed at those who have been conned by the hard left ideologues. It's aimed at the HR directors, at the executives who are blindly imposing radical ideological minority beliefs on their employees.
Alex Jones is right more often than he is wrong. But the way he presents his arguments means that his opponents have an easy time smearing him in the eyes of the normies.
I'm not after you, I'm not after the radicals, I'm after the normies and that means you have to serve their Red pill coated in such a way that they swallow it.
I don't care about EDI, I care about individuals taking moral and personal responsibility.
Cultural Blairism - the sacralisation of the “third way” - shifting things into ‘apolitical’ quangos that have a worldview that induces complete inertia and self selects the “lanyard class” to be its “leaders”. I find it fascinating that Paula Vennels could have been both the head of the post office & a prospective candidate for Bishop of London. In what kind of world is that even possible - but it shows the lanyard mind set is embedded in every institution. The other thing I notice is that in every institution that isn’t directly measured on the delivery of its core purpose via meaningful metrics (ie profits) the tendency will be for ambitious junior leaders to virtue signal their way up the ladder - hence emergency services flouting gay pride displays or established church clergy pontificating on slavery reparations.
Hear, hear. But as someone who came to the UK 30 years ago and knowing two other countries and people quite well, the USA and Germany, I must also tell you that this unwillingness to take personal responsibility has been prevalent and almost genetic in the UK 30 years ago already, and then still in contrast to those other countries: the "wrong kind of leaves" syndrome.
Sadly, though maybe good for Brits relatively speaking, that syndrome, general attitude and its lack of consequences leading to the now dysfunctional businesses and states, has spread to every other country in the West since about the financial crisis of 2008/9.
Serious question. How did Brits become more woke than Americans? Any British show I watch now hardly features what I would recognize are British people, and don't get me started on your media and adverts.
I suspect that population size and geography is a contributing factor. The UK is the size of Montana Wil a population of 80million. Culturally the nation is more concentrated although institutions like the BBC have lost a lot of their influence, until 20 years ago there were still only 5 TV channels. In my lifetime only 3 until the mid 80s. This means that there's a tradition of media literally being watched by 40% of the population at any one time. The viewing figures of the UK TV channels in the 80s and 90s could be fantasized about by the US Networks.
This has created a media culture that is very set on its path. You can see its successors in the legacy inheritors in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Whilst woke is an American invention, the implementation of woke as a cultural norm is especially easy to accomplish in a nation with our media set up. How else did we end up literally importing America 's race history and problems post George Floyd? We have our own issues yet they decided to nationally LARP as Mississippi 60 years ago.
I'd also add that the US Constitution and your governmental system is far more protected from manipulation than ours is. Contrary to many American opinions, we do have a Constitution in this country, indeed its the grandfather of your one. However, because of how it is curated, it has proven to be vulnerable to those who wish to tinker with it. Blair caused catastrophic Constitutional vandalism by scrapping the legal oversight of the House of Lords and implementing a Supreme Court which, because our judiciary are unelected, shifted huge power from Parliament back to The Crown (The Crown isn't the monarch, its the unelected state).
Add government by ministerial decree, where since the 1970s we have seen more and more laws passed without Parliamentary debate because of the lack of time, then we have also seen a huge concentration of power in the hands of the Prime Minister since the late 70s. A UK Prime Minister has vastly more powers and less oversight than a US president. Then add the fixed term Parliaments of 5 years and there's no way of removing a Prime Minister through democratic means.
This means that if the PM or Courts gets captured by activism it is remarkably easy for persecution of dissidents to follow.
This is why Farage's party is called Reform. We need to restore the Bill of Rights 1688 front and centre, wind the Constitutional court back to 1995, dismantle the quangos and abolish the Supreme Court. Turn the House of Lords into an elected senate and introduce propotional representation into the House of Commons. We also need a refreshed Bill of Rights to guarantee Freedom of Speech and expression under our NATURAL rights and remove the alien concept of Human Rights from our society. The UK, England specifically is where the idea of God given natural rights emerged
"Human rights" are state granted and are part of the Bonapartist system of democracy common across Europe. We have literally implemented the Bonapartist tyranny that we fought the Napoleonic wars to resist.
This is an old country, we've been around for a long time and the origins of the freedoms we have date back a very very long time. You don't switch those off in the public consciousness overnight. We've faced down tyrannical British governments before and we will do it again.
A study in complacency. This idiot doesn’t even understand where it started. ‘Oh, the Post Office!’ Was this dick born yesterday? Probably not heard of Hillsborough or if they have support the police. Thatcherism screwed the country for what I imagine will be a century. And pissy pieces like this make me furious. No. Fucking. Idea
OK I'm not going to respond to the childish abuse. So let's look at the rest of your comment?
This sort of comment is instructive — not because it contains any serious argument, but because it exemplifies the brittle rage that so often substitutes for thought.
To clarify: the article does not suggest that the Post Office scandal was the beginning of Britain's moral disintegration. It uses that scandal — precisely because it is recent, well-documented, and still unfolding — to illustrate the persistence of a deeper rot: the evasion of personal responsibility through institutional process, and the reliance on moral posturing in place of moral courage.
Hillsborough? Of course. It was one of the clearest early indicators of how institutions would lie, cover up, and wait for the public to forget. But it has also been extensively analysed, documented, and, in some quarters, finally acknowledged. What’s striking is not just that it happened, but that despite it, nothing fundamental changed. The lesson wasn’t learned — and that is the true subject of the piece.
As for Thatcher: one can trace many forms of modern institutional decay to the 1980s, but a mantra is not an argument. We are no longer in the 1980s. The question is not whether things went wrong back then — they did — but why they are still going wrong now, under a different political class, with different slogans, and with the benefit of hindsight. To gesture vaguely at Thatcherism while ignoring the failings of today’s elite is not radicalism. It is nostalgia masquerading as analysis.
If the piece makes you furious, I’d suggest the problem lies not in its scope, but in its refusal to flatter the narratives you prefer. That’s not complacency. That’s the point.
Where to start with this? Well, first of all, don’t dare lecture me about Hillsborough. How about doing a google search? Unlike people like you, I’ve fought – and continue to fight – real battles. As for the 1980s, the seeds of today’s problems are all there: deregulation, the selloff of state industries, the propagation of the “there is no society” lie. As for the rest, “perhaps we would be better off applying to become the 51st state.” Ho, ho, fucking ho. You make the leap between those who evade responsibility to DEI. HIYA CJ, THE PEOPLE WHO GET AWAY WITH IT ARE ALMOST ALWAYS WHITE, RICH AND WELL EDUCATED! I’m telling you, in all my years of campaigning, it’s not black, gay, trans or whatever you’d like to believe is the problem but institutions that are the essence of Englishness. Instead of spouting this shit – “performative,” anyone – get off your arse and get behind the push for a duty of candour. As for your “mavericks and independent” thinkers,” who do you mean? Enoch Powell, maybe? Here’s the thing: you can say almost anything you like but people don’t have to like it. Maybe one of the better things about this modern world is people have to take responsibility – yeah, you love responsibility – for their words and actions. You know, I’ve been that voice that speaks up against mainstream thought: on Hillsborough, when people thought we were self-pitying, conspiracy-theorist cranks; over politics, when we argued that jobs and services were more important than profits; on Northern Ireland, where the collusion between crown forces and loyalist paramilitaries not only subverted the good-guy/bad-guy narrative but presents a horrifying threat to freedom and illustrated the depth of establishment cover-ups. But, but, but DEI, I was in HR, grooming gangs! How much shouting did you do about the Kincora Boys’ Home? (and before you start, the phrase should be “rape gangs” and everyone connected with them and the botched investigations should be punished). The dogwhistling is clear in your work. You have selective memory. “Those of us in our later decades are truly in despair,” you say. What you can’t see is that those of you in your later decades created this environment. You cruised through you life in complacency and no whinge like bastards that you don’t like what you begat. Well, I’m in my 60s. I fought police on picket lines. I supported Liverpool City Council. I stepped over dead bodies at Hillsborough. I shouted from the rooftops about police cover-ups. I tried to tell people about the complexities of Northern Ireland. I abhor the likes of you telling us that Britain is falling apart when you’ve sleepwalked through most of your life. You call my insults “childish.” I say they’re deserved
Your response is long on volume but short on coherence. It’s a torrent of grievance, half-formed accusations, and personal history, which — however sincerely felt — doesn’t exempt you from the need to argue clearly, or to read what’s in front of you.
First, I made no attempt to "lecture" you about Hillsborough. I acknowledged its centrality and enduring moral weight. What I questioned — rightly — was your casual, sneering dismissal of anyone who doesn’t begin every sentence with “Thatcher” or end it with “Hillsborough.” It’s possible to value the truths uncovered in those battles and examine what is happening now.
Second, you are attacking a caricature. The piece doesn’t blame DEI for the collapse of public ethics. It criticises the use of performative DEI culture — not its stated aims — as a substitute for meaningful moral responsibility. The problem isn’t “black, gay, or trans people” — that’s your projection, not mine. The problem is institutions which talk the language of conscience while continuing to protect those in power from accountability. If you can’t tell the difference, I’m not sure you’re reading in good faith.
Third, if you truly believe that a duty of candour is the answer — good. So do I. But that duty must apply to everyone, including those who hide behind movements, slogans, or personal virtue to deflect criticism. That’s exactly the kind of evasion I’m trying to name.
You ask who the mavericks are. They’re the ones who question orthodoxies from any direction — left, right, or otherwise — and who refuse the safety of tribal language. They’re rarely rewarded, which is partly why we’re in this mess.
Finally, you speak of your past — your battles, your marches, your campaigns — and I don’t doubt any of it. But past struggle does not entitle you to abuse others now, nor to mistake your personal story for a universal truth. Some of us didn’t sleepwalk through life. We just didn’t shout in the same register as you.
You say your insults are deserved. I say they’re lazy. And that, in the end, is the real problem here.
Lastly — I’ve given you the courtesy of a reply. You may not know this, but on Substack, the author decides whether to allow comments. Despite the personal abuse you’ve thrown at me — a stranger — I chose not to delete your outbursts, but to engage with them in good faith.
If you can’t extend the same basic courtesy in return, then I won’t bother hosting your replies. I don’t care how many picket lines you stood on or Liverpool games you’ve attended — being angry and self-righteous doesn’t excuse being rude and abusive. You wonder why people talk about "moaning Scousers"? This sort of performance is part of the answer.
Demand? You and what army. You are in no position to demand a thing.
«Reward Courage, Not Conformity»
«Rebuild Diversity of Thought»
Same problem.
«Meanwhile, whistleblowers and independent thinkers are punished, ensuring that the cycle of failure continues unchecked.»
Of course they are. Thinking is not action, and those that merely wrong-think aloud can be pushed around. What are they gonna do? Retaliate by thinking harder at you?!
Blowing the whistle relies on other people then acting against the institution or offender. Who's gonna do that for them, when all institutions are either captured, aligned in their rotten interests or have no power?
«Resist Groupthink»
You are engaging in it. And the problem is not the "group"-part, but the "thought"-part.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you probably need to get out more. Your arguments are those of someone who has spent far too much time in his own head.
I couldn’t agree more but given the deliberate programme of ‘Common Purpose’ which has permeated our institutions i doubt anything will change in my lifetime. Deeply saddened by the state of my beloved country.
I first encountered that organisation 20 years ago and was invited to join - I informed them that I thought their project was a slippery slope to fascism - the collusion of state and business, the politicisation of institutions and wold result in groupthink which would destroy our society by increments.
Perhaps another symptom of moral disintegration is the rise of careerists who value their career progression over the values or the organisation? It's easy to ignore organisational failures when your eyes are on your next promotion, the next career achievement.
There's a lot of sense in 'The Way Forward'. If I had to pick one item as the most important it is naming and shaming leaders who fail to act. Tricky in today's litigious world but a good journalist should be able to pull it off, and exposing gutless executives to public censure is a social punishment for dodging responsibilities.
And that politics became, rather than a vocation, a career. Especially for useless lawyers...
Also the rise in the 80s of the MBA. This is pure Managerialism. Saw it in the space industry in the UK and Europe. No one takes a risk or keeps taking risks but creates a tentpole project instead. Why? Well that gets bums on seats.
And we wonder we Musk has eaten people’s lunch in this regard?
Because of their scale, the handling of the rape gangs and Post Office issues are surely the most obscene things to happen in Britain.
The former represents the death of trust in British policing. The latter the death of trust in our government and broader establishment.
Police officers take oaths to uphold the law. Any officer operating in those northern and Midland towns would definitely have known what was going on and who was doing it - yet they not only stood by and allowed brutal obscenities to be perpetrated, they actually persecuted the kids and parents themselves. Chief constables and divisional commanders issued unlawful orders to their officers - who in turn did not have the cojones to disobey them.
The Post Office issues are in a way even more disturbing in that supposedly educated and respectable people in positions of authority and responsibility, perpetrated lies for years that resulted in decent, hardworking people being stripped of the money, reputation and freedom. The government was complicit too, because from 2010, it was a shareholder and two senior civil servants sat on the board.
Yet NOBODY is being held to account for either outrage........and probably never will be.
All one needs to know about the depth of institutionalised incompetence, corruption and moral torpor is that the former Archbishop of Canterbury wanted to make Paula Vennells the Bishop of London; whilst Labour made a northern 'community leader' and rapist a peer.
That is the state of 21C Britain after 25yrs of Blair-like politics from both parties and our public servants.
The new administration in USA is taking great steps towards cleaning things up - the will to do similar here does not exist.
I didn't think that things would get this bad so quickly. Perhaps it's a good thing but I detect people still sticking their heads in the sand.
Covid did it. The first "in the open" experiment in "what will the people put up with?"
The result. They will comply with all they are told to. They'll take an experimental gene therapy jab, authorised as an emergency and way off the completion of even first phase clinical testing) without so much as a "I don't want to".
Fair play to all those who said no, and lost their jobs. In their cases, the Nuremberg Code was broken and nothing happened.
We hanged people who did this during the war. Now? Nothing.
The only consolation is that this Labour government is so so bad (recommended - David McGrogan's stack, "News from Uncibal" - today's post sums up HOW FUBAR we are, but that there are signs of movement in the right direction.
God willing. At 73 I never thought I'd be called to the barricades, but if needed, I'll be there; or at our local farm gates, brandishing a pitch fork.
As my wife and I say all the time
"They can all fuck off"
https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/endgame
The expenses scandal of 2012 the first explosion in front of us, the great unwashed, followed in 2016 by the patent attempt by the House to scupper Brexit, with our sociopath leader spending two years trying to overthrow the referendum.
And a state that allows a party for whomp one in five voted to get such a huge majority has had it. I am no fan of PR, and FPTP has worked well - but that's buggered now, as many se no point in voting anyway.
God will that the second American Revolution takes place, and that Trump, who has the power to wound psych Starmer fatally, does so.
Brexit really did flush them out into the open though - the mask slipped utterly - and they openly showed their contempt for the plebs
my latest article looks at the chilling impact the assault on freedom of speech has had on political participationhttps://open.substack.com/pub/cjstrachan/p/in-the-uk-the-current-default-is?r=3leiou&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
How do we "hold leaders to account"?
How do we *do* anything to change all this rot?
The people at the top support people like themselves. They close ranks, exclude the objectors, trouble-makers, independent thinkers. If this wasn't so then there would only be hobbyists writing articles here on Substack and I'd be watching the BBC News.
I don't see any way to hold anyone to account because nobody is responsible for anything and any telling off that goes on is done by the same class of people. I don't see Matt Hancock, for example, being held to account for any of his poor decisions during the pandemic. He just walked away. Paula Vennells isn't being held to account for the Post Office fiasco - a bit of public weeping and off into the sunset with her. Chief Executives of hospital trusts, police forces, county councils simply move on to a new part of the country or move sideways into a different area of "public life". I mean - Tony Blair is still walking the earth as a free man!
There does not appear to be a way of holding anyone to account for anything.
Unfortunately I suspect you are correct. The only possible remedy will be if change is forced on us through economic necessity. If the markets demand it.
I'm deeply Sceptical about whether this would happen until we were a total basket case as Argentina was.
And Argentina was a basketcase for absolutely years. My husband's family lived in Peru after the war. His father believed strongly in showing that he had confidence in the country he lived and worked in and so kept his money in Peru. His uncle had no such confidence and kept his money in US dollars outside the country. His father lost the lot in the early '70s when the government changed and threw the foreigners out. Ironically, his uncle lost the lot when the oil crisis hit a few years later and there was a run on the dollar (or maybe it was something Jimmy Carter did? I wasn't there!). So, I would advise keeping an eye on whether people carry on keeping their money in the UK or not as we slide into being a third world basketcase country.
As an Anglophile American, I have always admired British culture and history. Watching Britain’s slow-motion suicide is like seeing my mom being raped to death but being too far away to intervene. Not that things are all that great here in the USA, but at least we don’t (usually) get arrested for memes. Your migrant problem is even worse than ours. You need a militantly pro-white, pro-Christian, nativist movement to take back control from all the foreign scavengers feasting on your nation’s corpse. Best of luck to you.
Yes, see my response to P.Morse above
I think the inability of children’s services, schools and the police says more about the defunding and hollowing out of local services by the tories than it does group think. It wasn’t primarily about anxiety about being seen as racist but the capacity to support children and families across a range of risks despite the efforts of many professionals at all levels.
I left England at age 40 and have lived in the States for the last 34 years. Growing up in England when people in positions of responsibility and politicians resigned when found to have indulged in criminal or morally reprehensible behaviour was the norm. Who the hell resigns these days? And that’s true on both sides of the Atlantic. We have allowed the rise of a class of professional politicians most of whom are venal and corrupt alongside an ever growing army of apparatchiks not subject to oversight or accountability. The permanent state has become a self aggrandising and self perpetuating entity living entirely separate lives from the mass of the population upon whom they are dependent for funding. Inevitably this will reach critical mass where there are not enough people leading productive lives and paying taxes to fund the parasitic bureaucracy sucking their blood. At that point the entire structure collapses.
"While the principles of DEI are important"
I'd suggest that the principles of DEI are not important. They are divisive, racist, anti-meritocratic (if there is such a word) and drive conformity of thought, the very thing you rightly decry.
They lead to the disadvantage of those they are supposed to help, where you end up thinking "Is this ethnic minority Doctor treating me here because he's competent or because he filled a quota?" That's not a thought I want to be having, I don't care what colour a person is, I want to be able to trust they are where they are because they are competent.
There's been some research done in the US that demonstrates that DEI policies have the opposite effect of what they are supposed to which is, of course, no surprise to anyone with half a brain.
EDI is toxic and there is sound research demonstrating how catastrophic it has been in the UK especially in the workplace. I cite this evidence.
The article isn't aimed at you, you're not the audience, you understand the problem. The article is aimed at those who have been conned by the hard left ideologues. It's aimed at the HR directors, at the executives who are blindly imposing radical ideological minority beliefs on their employees.
Alex Jones is right more often than he is wrong. But the way he presents his arguments means that his opponents have an easy time smearing him in the eyes of the normies.
I'm not after you, I'm not after the radicals, I'm after the normies and that means you have to serve their Red pill coated in such a way that they swallow it.
I don't care about EDI, I care about individuals taking moral and personal responsibility.
Cultural Blairism - the sacralisation of the “third way” - shifting things into ‘apolitical’ quangos that have a worldview that induces complete inertia and self selects the “lanyard class” to be its “leaders”. I find it fascinating that Paula Vennels could have been both the head of the post office & a prospective candidate for Bishop of London. In what kind of world is that even possible - but it shows the lanyard mind set is embedded in every institution. The other thing I notice is that in every institution that isn’t directly measured on the delivery of its core purpose via meaningful metrics (ie profits) the tendency will be for ambitious junior leaders to virtue signal their way up the ladder - hence emergency services flouting gay pride displays or established church clergy pontificating on slavery reparations.
Hear, hear. But as someone who came to the UK 30 years ago and knowing two other countries and people quite well, the USA and Germany, I must also tell you that this unwillingness to take personal responsibility has been prevalent and almost genetic in the UK 30 years ago already, and then still in contrast to those other countries: the "wrong kind of leaves" syndrome.
Sadly, though maybe good for Brits relatively speaking, that syndrome, general attitude and its lack of consequences leading to the now dysfunctional businesses and states, has spread to every other country in the West since about the financial crisis of 2008/9.
Oh yes, there was nothing new but there was at least diversity of opinion in leadership teams and organizational culture back then.
And yes, this malaise infects the West in particular.
Serious question. How did Brits become more woke than Americans? Any British show I watch now hardly features what I would recognize are British people, and don't get me started on your media and adverts.
I suspect that population size and geography is a contributing factor. The UK is the size of Montana Wil a population of 80million. Culturally the nation is more concentrated although institutions like the BBC have lost a lot of their influence, until 20 years ago there were still only 5 TV channels. In my lifetime only 3 until the mid 80s. This means that there's a tradition of media literally being watched by 40% of the population at any one time. The viewing figures of the UK TV channels in the 80s and 90s could be fantasized about by the US Networks.
This has created a media culture that is very set on its path. You can see its successors in the legacy inheritors in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Whilst woke is an American invention, the implementation of woke as a cultural norm is especially easy to accomplish in a nation with our media set up. How else did we end up literally importing America 's race history and problems post George Floyd? We have our own issues yet they decided to nationally LARP as Mississippi 60 years ago.
I'd also add that the US Constitution and your governmental system is far more protected from manipulation than ours is. Contrary to many American opinions, we do have a Constitution in this country, indeed its the grandfather of your one. However, because of how it is curated, it has proven to be vulnerable to those who wish to tinker with it. Blair caused catastrophic Constitutional vandalism by scrapping the legal oversight of the House of Lords and implementing a Supreme Court which, because our judiciary are unelected, shifted huge power from Parliament back to The Crown (The Crown isn't the monarch, its the unelected state).
Add government by ministerial decree, where since the 1970s we have seen more and more laws passed without Parliamentary debate because of the lack of time, then we have also seen a huge concentration of power in the hands of the Prime Minister since the late 70s. A UK Prime Minister has vastly more powers and less oversight than a US president. Then add the fixed term Parliaments of 5 years and there's no way of removing a Prime Minister through democratic means.
This means that if the PM or Courts gets captured by activism it is remarkably easy for persecution of dissidents to follow.
This is why Farage's party is called Reform. We need to restore the Bill of Rights 1688 front and centre, wind the Constitutional court back to 1995, dismantle the quangos and abolish the Supreme Court. Turn the House of Lords into an elected senate and introduce propotional representation into the House of Commons. We also need a refreshed Bill of Rights to guarantee Freedom of Speech and expression under our NATURAL rights and remove the alien concept of Human Rights from our society. The UK, England specifically is where the idea of God given natural rights emerged
"Human rights" are state granted and are part of the Bonapartist system of democracy common across Europe. We have literally implemented the Bonapartist tyranny that we fought the Napoleonic wars to resist.
This is an old country, we've been around for a long time and the origins of the freedoms we have date back a very very long time. You don't switch those off in the public consciousness overnight. We've faced down tyrannical British governments before and we will do it again.
The first sign of the moral and intellectual degeneration of the British public was the Boaty McBoatface incident on Twitter.
A study in complacency. This idiot doesn’t even understand where it started. ‘Oh, the Post Office!’ Was this dick born yesterday? Probably not heard of Hillsborough or if they have support the police. Thatcherism screwed the country for what I imagine will be a century. And pissy pieces like this make me furious. No. Fucking. Idea
OK I'm not going to respond to the childish abuse. So let's look at the rest of your comment?
This sort of comment is instructive — not because it contains any serious argument, but because it exemplifies the brittle rage that so often substitutes for thought.
To clarify: the article does not suggest that the Post Office scandal was the beginning of Britain's moral disintegration. It uses that scandal — precisely because it is recent, well-documented, and still unfolding — to illustrate the persistence of a deeper rot: the evasion of personal responsibility through institutional process, and the reliance on moral posturing in place of moral courage.
Hillsborough? Of course. It was one of the clearest early indicators of how institutions would lie, cover up, and wait for the public to forget. But it has also been extensively analysed, documented, and, in some quarters, finally acknowledged. What’s striking is not just that it happened, but that despite it, nothing fundamental changed. The lesson wasn’t learned — and that is the true subject of the piece.
As for Thatcher: one can trace many forms of modern institutional decay to the 1980s, but a mantra is not an argument. We are no longer in the 1980s. The question is not whether things went wrong back then — they did — but why they are still going wrong now, under a different political class, with different slogans, and with the benefit of hindsight. To gesture vaguely at Thatcherism while ignoring the failings of today’s elite is not radicalism. It is nostalgia masquerading as analysis.
If the piece makes you furious, I’d suggest the problem lies not in its scope, but in its refusal to flatter the narratives you prefer. That’s not complacency. That’s the point.
Where to start with this? Well, first of all, don’t dare lecture me about Hillsborough. How about doing a google search? Unlike people like you, I’ve fought – and continue to fight – real battles. As for the 1980s, the seeds of today’s problems are all there: deregulation, the selloff of state industries, the propagation of the “there is no society” lie. As for the rest, “perhaps we would be better off applying to become the 51st state.” Ho, ho, fucking ho. You make the leap between those who evade responsibility to DEI. HIYA CJ, THE PEOPLE WHO GET AWAY WITH IT ARE ALMOST ALWAYS WHITE, RICH AND WELL EDUCATED! I’m telling you, in all my years of campaigning, it’s not black, gay, trans or whatever you’d like to believe is the problem but institutions that are the essence of Englishness. Instead of spouting this shit – “performative,” anyone – get off your arse and get behind the push for a duty of candour. As for your “mavericks and independent” thinkers,” who do you mean? Enoch Powell, maybe? Here’s the thing: you can say almost anything you like but people don’t have to like it. Maybe one of the better things about this modern world is people have to take responsibility – yeah, you love responsibility – for their words and actions. You know, I’ve been that voice that speaks up against mainstream thought: on Hillsborough, when people thought we were self-pitying, conspiracy-theorist cranks; over politics, when we argued that jobs and services were more important than profits; on Northern Ireland, where the collusion between crown forces and loyalist paramilitaries not only subverted the good-guy/bad-guy narrative but presents a horrifying threat to freedom and illustrated the depth of establishment cover-ups. But, but, but DEI, I was in HR, grooming gangs! How much shouting did you do about the Kincora Boys’ Home? (and before you start, the phrase should be “rape gangs” and everyone connected with them and the botched investigations should be punished). The dogwhistling is clear in your work. You have selective memory. “Those of us in our later decades are truly in despair,” you say. What you can’t see is that those of you in your later decades created this environment. You cruised through you life in complacency and no whinge like bastards that you don’t like what you begat. Well, I’m in my 60s. I fought police on picket lines. I supported Liverpool City Council. I stepped over dead bodies at Hillsborough. I shouted from the rooftops about police cover-ups. I tried to tell people about the complexities of Northern Ireland. I abhor the likes of you telling us that Britain is falling apart when you’ve sleepwalked through most of your life. You call my insults “childish.” I say they’re deserved
Your response is long on volume but short on coherence. It’s a torrent of grievance, half-formed accusations, and personal history, which — however sincerely felt — doesn’t exempt you from the need to argue clearly, or to read what’s in front of you.
First, I made no attempt to "lecture" you about Hillsborough. I acknowledged its centrality and enduring moral weight. What I questioned — rightly — was your casual, sneering dismissal of anyone who doesn’t begin every sentence with “Thatcher” or end it with “Hillsborough.” It’s possible to value the truths uncovered in those battles and examine what is happening now.
Second, you are attacking a caricature. The piece doesn’t blame DEI for the collapse of public ethics. It criticises the use of performative DEI culture — not its stated aims — as a substitute for meaningful moral responsibility. The problem isn’t “black, gay, or trans people” — that’s your projection, not mine. The problem is institutions which talk the language of conscience while continuing to protect those in power from accountability. If you can’t tell the difference, I’m not sure you’re reading in good faith.
Third, if you truly believe that a duty of candour is the answer — good. So do I. But that duty must apply to everyone, including those who hide behind movements, slogans, or personal virtue to deflect criticism. That’s exactly the kind of evasion I’m trying to name.
You ask who the mavericks are. They’re the ones who question orthodoxies from any direction — left, right, or otherwise — and who refuse the safety of tribal language. They’re rarely rewarded, which is partly why we’re in this mess.
Finally, you speak of your past — your battles, your marches, your campaigns — and I don’t doubt any of it. But past struggle does not entitle you to abuse others now, nor to mistake your personal story for a universal truth. Some of us didn’t sleepwalk through life. We just didn’t shout in the same register as you.
You say your insults are deserved. I say they’re lazy. And that, in the end, is the real problem here.
Lastly — I’ve given you the courtesy of a reply. You may not know this, but on Substack, the author decides whether to allow comments. Despite the personal abuse you’ve thrown at me — a stranger — I chose not to delete your outbursts, but to engage with them in good faith.
If you can’t extend the same basic courtesy in return, then I won’t bother hosting your replies. I don’t care how many picket lines you stood on or Liverpool games you’ve attended — being angry and self-righteous doesn’t excuse being rude and abusive. You wonder why people talk about "moaning Scousers"? This sort of performance is part of the answer.
Oh do piss off. I’ve actually done some good. You’re a pseud on Substack
Thank you for confirming all my points.
You really need to calm down or you're unlikely to make 70.
You are such a fool. Go away and obsess over DEI. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to try and make the world a better place
Keep it up, gramps… I'll let you know when you come close to landing one.. so far you're about as effective as your friend Derek Hatton 🤣🤣
OK Tony, you've had your say and demonstrated yourself incapable of moderating your tone. I'll put it in football terms so you understand:
Red Card - off the pitch and permanent suspension.
«Demand Accountability»
Demand? You and what army. You are in no position to demand a thing.
«Reward Courage, Not Conformity»
«Rebuild Diversity of Thought»
Same problem.
«Meanwhile, whistleblowers and independent thinkers are punished, ensuring that the cycle of failure continues unchecked.»
Of course they are. Thinking is not action, and those that merely wrong-think aloud can be pushed around. What are they gonna do? Retaliate by thinking harder at you?!
Blowing the whistle relies on other people then acting against the institution or offender. Who's gonna do that for them, when all institutions are either captured, aligned in their rotten interests or have no power?
«Resist Groupthink»
You are engaging in it. And the problem is not the "group"-part, but the "thought"-part.
Don't take this the wrong way, but you probably need to get out more. Your arguments are those of someone who has spent far too much time in his own head.