Mid-week roundup

When I started this Substack, it was with a view to moving away from X (Twitter) as the moderation (censorship) policy hasn’t really changed under the new management. My account can be arbitrarily suspended at a moment’s notice and all my work is instantly depublished. That said, X remains the focal point of political discourse, and I reluctantly persevere with it.

The function of this Substack, therefore, is as a back-up for my long-form tweets, and a place for longer essays. With your support it affords me a very modest income. I presently have no other income so your subscriptions and retweets are the only thing keeping this show on the road. For today’s post, I’m republishing a few of my long-form tweets on a range of topics from this week. Strap yourselves in for a long read.

___

University challenged

Occasionally Britain's workforce has to adapt to changes in the economy. There are often significant economic casualties. The advent of containerisation did it for dock workers of Liverpool, and the skip winding system made thousands of miners redundant. Sometimes the government has to step in and make the tough call.

One such example is aerospace. Though it's viewed as a travesty by some, it was very necessary to rationalise Britain's aerospace industry. It was bloated, over-manned, unproductive, and it was a hangover from war production that we could not sustain. The industry produced more flops than export successes. Similarly the railways were held to ransom by unions, overmanned and inefficient. Something had to be done eventually.

We are now approaching another of those times where we have a bloated, unproductive industry held hostage by Marxist unions and nepotism. It employs thousands of useless people racking up massive pension liabilities while adding nothing to national productivity. I am, of course, talking about British universities.

There are now more academics than the sector can sustain, many of which are of low calibre. Through their union action on pay, universities are finding they can't make their payroll without cutting back on perks, shelving expansions and modernisations, or simply scrapping entire departments. During a period of high inflation, more and more universities are finding they have expanded beyond their capabilities, contributing to an oversupply of graduates and an oversupply of courses.

You would have thought that with so many of them having economics departments that somebody might have pointed out that you can't base such a flimsy model on exponential growth without contingency planning, but here we are. Consequently universities have some tough choices to make.

This should be relatively easy for them to correct. If they did a serious investigation into the nepotism and incompetence in its managerial ranks, they would easily be able to shed overheads without it impacting performance. University vice-chancellors are also long overdue a haircut.

But, of course, that's not how it's going to play. They will instead "streamline" administration to the point where it no longer functions, cut back on teaching, and cut the pay of junior academics to the extent they piss off overseas or look for a real job. The overall quality of teaching will decline and students will increasingly complain about dilapidated facilities, non-existent tutoring, late grading, and rip off fees. Just when they already thought it couldn't be worse.

Much of this has been exacerbated by Net Zero red tape, and eco-planning requirements for new facilities. Meanwhile staff pensions underperform thanks to academics voting to divest from arms manufacturers and the oil industry. They're getting exactly what they lobbied for.

Rather than address their own greed and incompetence they will instead lobby the government for more fees from foreign students, and lower their entry requirements to the point where even PhD students lack basic English skills, and supervisors will be pressured to give them pass marks even if they're morons. They will debase the reputation of British qualifications and our academic institutions.

Labour, of course, will fall for this special pleading, and grant them a reprieve rather than restructuring the sector. Only it's not going to work. They're up to their eyeballs in debt. Total university debt is over £10 billion and central government can't bail them out. At some point, the adults are going to have to step in and make their choices for them.

Unlike many other industries, though, this is not a great loss to society. It can't happen soon enough and the result will be improved standards across the board. Some of them will have to go bankrupt. Some of them will have to close. Some of them will have to revert to being regional technical colleges. Some of our third rate cities can't sustain one university, let alone two. The result will be higher quality qualifications and teaching, better research and fewer students getting into debts they can't service.

Every major industry recalibration has had its casualties, but none will be more deserving than British academia. This will be especially gratifying since it produces a class of ignorant, aloof midwits who sneer at the working classes. There is not much to look forward to on the horizon, but this will be glorious.

___

Just about everyone seems to agree that we need to rationalise the university industry and return most of them to the status of polytechnics. It's a bubble and it's deflating fast. When that happens, we're going to have to rethink universities as a concept. Fees are going to have to go up, so we're going to need a support mechanism for bright students of modest means. Only it can't be available to any Tom, Dick or Harry. There has to be demonstrable merit.

At the same time, we're going to have to restore the link between a degree and earnings. The lack of a degree shouldn't be a barrier to entering most jobs. Degrees should be reserved for elite professions in law, teaching, science and medicine. We then restore the prestige of an elite education, which goes some way to restoring trust in the professions. We need to make it clear that university isn't for everyone, and that's ok, because it's not the only road to social mobility.

I think, though, the best change we could make is to invest heavily in the Open University. The internet opened up a galaxy of possibilities for distance learning, and in many ways, the cuts to middle-ranking universities have degraded the university experience to such a degree that they might as well be distance learning courses.

The idea I'm quite attached to is the cumulative "build-a-bear" degree, where elective modules can add up to a recognised qualification that could be the foundation for a career in the civil service or as a commissioned officer in the armed services. It does away with mickey mouse degrees but allows students to tailor their learning to their interests. As to polytechnics, they can resume their traditional role of offering vocational STEM qualifications.

As to foreign students, there will always be a demand for a degrees from prestigious British institutions. In recent years universities have debased and devalued that prestige by becoming an immigration funnel, and lowering entry requirements. This must end. Nobody should be admitted if they cannot demonstrate English fluency and literacy, and visas may only be issued on the presumption they will return.

There is a case for creaming off the top foreign talent, but corporate employers must be able to demonstrate a convincing case that their requirements force them to compete for international talent. Outside of high end STEM and medicine, this is unlikely.

The British university system as it exists now, has lost touch with any concept of the public good and the national interest. It's all about exponential growth, bums on seats, and the profit margin; passing the externalities (housing and infrastructure stresses) on to the wider public. As such, they are parasitic, and wholly self-interested. They are deceiving our young people and ripping them off.

___

God and country

There's an emerging view on the right that much of what afflicts Britain, and the source of our intellectual, economic and moral decline, is a spiritual crisis. Our abandonment of Christianity has created a vacuum, and it was only Christianity holding the forces of darkness at bay. Once you remove one belief system, others will compete for cultural supremacy. Among those are various death cults such as climate scientology, gender voodoo, communism and Islam.

I'm not unsympathetic to that view. But the thing is, we're not all going to wake up and rediscover our Christian roots. You won't get the masses going back to church. Through its institutional debasement, there is no church to return to. The Church of England itself has abandoned Christianity and invited Satanic forces through its doors. Satan wrapped in a rainbow flag. Modern liberalism will hollow out your religion and wear it as a skinsuit. We can say much the same of the monarchy which surrendered to the dogma of multiculturalism.

As such, there is nothing left to believe in. There is no national unity. Multiculturalism has destroyed it. The bonds of nationhood have been weakened by mass immigration and cultural relativism. Our decadent ruling elites disavow the very idea of nation and homeland, and actively despise the people of Britain.

Only national conservatism can pull Britain back from the brink, but actual conservatism is essentially vanquished. What's left of it is cowed, unambitious and timid. As such, America has a greater chance of survival than Britain, in that it still has Christian roots that can unite its peoples. Their version of National Conservatism still embraces Christianity.

Clause 4 of the National Conservatism charter states:

"No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition. For millennia, the Bible has been our surest guide, nourishing a fitting orientation toward God, to the political traditions of the nation, to public morals, to the defense of the weak, and to the recognition of things rightly regarded as sacred. The Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and non-believers alike. Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private".

Britain on the other hand, is in a secular doom spiral. The people have turned their backs on God and they do not believe in the teaching of Christ. I'm one of them. I understand the importance of faith as the cornerstone of nation and community, but I've never been able to take it seriously. I'm not a militant atheist nor do I spit on anyone who believes. I actually envy their faith, and I understand that we've lost something important.

That said, I don't think there is any undoing what is done. Perhaps if we did restore Christianity as the focal point of education, to reignite faith and spirituality in the young, we might get somewhere, but I just don't see that happening. Not in my lifetime anyway. We don't even see our ancient places of worship as sacred. Our cathedrals are becoming multi-faith centres, exhibition halls and artisan marketplaces. We are not a nation. We live among the ruins of a nation.

This has me wondering if there can be a substitute for faith that is strong enough to keep the death cults at bay. I think only nationalism has a chance, but we need a new idea of Britain that can unite and inspire devotion. Multiculturalism can never do that. A civilisation that holds third-worldism as equal is one heading to the graveyard.

___

Fiddling around the edges

This week Miriam Cates is banging the drum to ban minors from using smartphones.

I like Miriam Cates and I know what she's getting at but this is the wrong approach and I doubt it's enforceable. If anything it will weaken the authority of the state because parents will openly defy it. What's missing is proper parental supervision and a lack of discipline imposed by teachers. That points to a bigger and more difficult problem.

Teachers, like the police, can only impose discipline if they have the backing of the state and the parents. The police are hamstrung by political correctness without political backing, and teachers live in constant fear of lawsuits and disciplinary action. Consequently, they have no authority and kids can run rings around them, just as criminals can openly mock the plod.

The more difficult problem is the lack of parental backing of teachers, where parents view teachers as glorified babysitters. Teachers should have parental authority to impose discipline on licence, but if teachers assert their own authority, they are likely to face complaints from parents.

The other problem, is that we have overly feminised teaching, and too many teachers are an absolute pushover who do not command respect in their own right thus lack personal authority. Kids can smell a weakling a mile off.

The ultimate issue, though, is feckless parents who take no interest in their child's development, and believe it is the responsibility of the school to instill discipline. Parents are outsourcing parenthood to schools, and a leftist run educational establishment is all too happy to assume that role, with the state acting as a surrogate. Leftists want control over your kids so they can indoctrinate them in everything from climate dogma to gender ideology. Instruments like free school meals are just one of the ways to water down parental responsibility.

Fixing this is not easy. Fixing it requires better, more rounded teachers. It used to be the case that teaching was a respected profession and a teacher would enjoy a degree of social status. Now it's just a job. There is no competition to become a teacher, and nobody in their right mind would want to do it with so little moral support from the state or from parents, and not for the pitiful pay.

I think what's needed is a formal contract between parents and schools, setting our the obligations of all parties including the child, and the school should enjoy the right to exclude. Here I'm in danger of speaking outside my field of experience, because I know how difficult that would be to enforce, and the school isn't always right. It would probably need independent regional arbitration bodies headed up by voluntary magistrates.

We have no problem setting standards, but we're useless at enforcing them because we're a soft touch and there are too many mitigating excuses. We need to demand better of parents and make them understand that their negligence, indifference and incompetence will have consequences. What we're talking about here is a renewed social contract that stops making allowances, especially on the grounds of race/faith and culture, and doesn't bend to "special snowflakism". You child, in all probability, does not have special needs, isn't autistic, and needs to comply with the same basic standards as everyone else.

The proliferation of unchecked phone use among minors is a symptom of a broader malaise, and Cates is attacking a symptom rather than an issue that has deeper philosophical causes.

As such, her proposal is only going to end up inconveniencing responsible parents while making virtually zero impact on the causal problems, which would no doubt require much more ambitious and contentious measures, and will again have to take on the blob. This falls short of that very necessary confrontation, and we can chalk it up as another instance of the Tories fiddling around the edges, and shrinking from taking on bad faith actors and degenerate leftist ideas. This is a half measure, and it ain't gonna work. This simplistic, half-baked populist approach illustrates why populism is a poor substitute for policy.

___

Eurovision Mong Contest

I've been quite amused by the Satanic panic of Eurovision. I'm old enough to remember it the first time around. Most of my metal album covers had Satanic imagery. Only back then, it was designed to shock pious Christian fundamentalists in the USA. It was never taken all that seriously in the UK because we've not had a problem with puritanical Christianity in the modern age.

What followed, though, was an almighty national row in the USA about freedom of artistic expression as Christian groups attempted to ban bands with explicit lyrics and dark imagery. Heavy metal bands were blamed for teen suicides and school shootings. Which was absolute bullshit. As such, bands like WASP and Twisted Sister, among others were at the forefront of a libertarian movement that changed America forever - and for the better.

The injection of Satanic imagery into Eurovision is just as entertaining. The juxtaposition and incongruity is marvellous. Only there's a not-so-subtle difference.

American metal bands adopting Satanic imagery were usually nice Christian boys who just wanted to be edgy. And they were, for the time. In a wider cultural context, though, there is nothing at all edgy about Bambie Thug. She couldn't be more conformist if she tried.

But there is also a darker undertone. She represents the narcissism, selfishness and vanity of modernity. Just about every deadly sin in fact. She better represents the devil out of costume, particularly since she embraces child-mutilating gender ideology.

As such, there was most definitely an evil presence at this year's Eurovision, and nobody is remotely surprised that antisemitism followed her through the door. I guess the lesson is that sometimes those who readily embrace evil imagery are as evil as they look. But then we shouldn't be surprised to see this evolve out of a song contest that spawned Abba. There was nowhere else it could go after that.

___

Farmageddon

I watched some of the new Clarkson's Farm this week. It highlights a lot of what I've been saying in that farmers have to diversify and innovate to stay in business, and that policy makers should be looking to remove the planning and regulatory barriers (and compliance costs) rather than dreaming up new environmental subsidy schemes. Farmers want to be farmers, not park rangers.

Still, though, I don't think that's going to be enough to save British farming. What Clarkson doesn't point out, but is abundantly obvious, is that the return on capital invested is tiny. Everything Clarkson turns his hand to in the space of just two episodes requires prepared outbuildings, expensive equipment, specialist vehicles, fuel, manpower, management and consultancy. Clarkson is fortunate to have a shit hot land agent (Charlie Ireland), but that advice doesn't come free. Not forgetting insurance and inspection costs.

A standout point for me was the raft of compliance just to make fruit jam for the domestic market - and not even destined for supermarkets. There is scope for some common sense deregulation. The obvious point, however, is that farming is energy intensive. Fertiliser and pesticide production, grain drying and storage, is all contingent on energy. For as long as you have an energy policy that front loads industry with costs (Net Zero), food production will remain an expensive business. The knock-on effects are felt all the way through the chain.

Clarkson is really just a hobby farmer. He's just playing at it. (Serious farmers don’t spend £600 on vet bills for a sick animal that probably won’t live). None of his operations are at a serious commercial scale, and he has plenty of his own cash reserves. But most farmers don't. It's make or break for them. You can't keep piling on the costs and expect to maintain a viable agriculture sector, and when planning and regulation is inherently hostile to food producers, you can't blame farmers for simply walking away.

___

Begging bowl

If you would like to see more of this content, please consider a paid subscription or donating through the following link:

https://www.paypal.me/petenorth303

I don’t like asking, but I certainly could use it right now. Thank you.