Ray Bradbury; pinko fear-monger

"...it appears that science fiction may be a lucrative field for the introduction of Communist ideologies.

"Communists have found fertile opportunities for development; for spreading distrust and lack of confidence in America [sic] institutions in the area of science fiction writing.

"...the general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria which would make it possible to conduct a Third World War in which the American people would seriously believe could not be won since their moral had been seriously destroyed [sic].”

I love Bradbury, grew up on him, and he was probably the biggest literary stylistic influence in my writing from the earliest age, and there's a whole lot more to his writing than just this. But frankly, yes, this is actually a pretty fair critique of some of the political and philosophical background of his work. In fact, re-reading his short stories, which I still love, his southpaw moral relativism, and often silly pseudo-mysticism is absurdly transparent. This piece presents it as all a ridiculous joke, but really it was true. No, I don't think he was formally a commie himself, but he was part of that more general movement of our society to embrace the lefty proposals.

I remember being utterly terrified by the nuclear threat when I was a kid, and from a very early age. And I was convinced by a lot of the sci fi I read and watched on TV that it was the US that was the biggest threat. They were always portrayed as the bad guys, the ones who would be most likely to "push the button." We were told over and over that the poor dear Soviets were just misunderstood and the victims of a propaganda campaign from evil, greedy, militaristic America.

But really the effect was a lot worse than this. A whole generation of us grew up completely convinced that any given fifteen minute period could be our last (they told us it would take about 15 minutes for the bombs to reach us from the Soviet Union over the Pacific) and that we were all likely to be dead before we were thirty. This preaching started in elementary school and carried on all the way through high school. It was preached in all the movies, tv shows and books. Everywhere, constantly.

The Boomers seemed to take pleasure in terrifying their children with stories of spending our last hours, if we were unfortunate enough to survive the blast, stumbling helpless, dying, burnt and blind through the wreckage, envying the dead. I had regular nightmares about the bomb, sometimes several a week, all through my childhood. It never seemed to occur to anyone that they were damaging us with this stuff.

And it was a mythology very strongly promoted by the lefty sci fi writers of the time, and it did a lot to convince a huge number of us that there was just no point in making plans for life, that there was no hope for the future. It created a generation of nihilists who firmly believed that working to build up anything, a marriage, a business, a society, was completely futile, and that ultimately it was better to be dead than alive. I've talked about this before and I know other people my age who had exactly the same experience. They used to call "Gen-X" the "slacker generation" because we had been so firmly convinced that life itself was futile.

So, yeah. Bradbury helped to create this modern terror that did in fact generate a kind of long-term moral paralysis for a huge number of people influenced by him and his fellow lefty doom-sayers. He wasn't the only one, but he certainly influenced me, a rabid fan, to believe it.



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Feel the luuurve...

The next time someone asks you what homosexuality and abortion have to do with each other, tell them, "I dunno, why don't you ask these guys. I'm sure they'll be able to fill you in on the Big Picture."



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Leftie Gloom

"He took it as a sign of worse to come and decided to set a date for his euthanasia"

This is something I've been saying for a long time. The Death Culture is driven by fear. And our culture has become so atomized and individualized, that a lot of people are simply afraid of life on their own when they are no longer able to fend for themselves.

I remember realising that it also grew out of the Cold War. When I was growing up, I heard a lot from the adults about how terrible the world was going to be after The Bomb. No one would want to live, the "living would envy the dead". I think a lot of our current cultural assumption that we would all be better off dead comes from that.

We assume that suffering is all there is going to be, and that the suffering is going to be unendurable, and, as good secularists, we believe it is meaningless. We're going to be alone in a survival-of-the-fittest world where no one owes anything to anyone else. Life is nasty, brutish and short and there's no heaven to be won, so why endure it?

We've all got a terrifying post-apocalyptic movie running in our heads all the time.

As the writer of this piece said, it's hardly surprising that Dr. Doom n'Gloom decided to kill himself. His worldview told him that life has no value unless it's all peaches and roses, his kids thought he should off himself, his country says it's legal and morally A-OK, and his entire gloomy culture says that the suffering of life, that no one gets to escape, is meaningless.

Are we surprised that "leftists" (which, as far as I can tell really means "nihilists") want to die?

“The living world has become impoverished, species are being lost every day, energy and other resources are nearing exhaustion, the environment is deteriorating, pollution is everywhere, climate is changing, natural balances are threatened. Especially, human beings are being crushed by their own number. Overcrowded cities are spawning increasingly lawless suburbs. Waste is accumulating in and around them, straining the capacity to deal with it. Vast areas are witness to the struggles of destitute populations trying to survive under unlivable conditions.

"In spite of the advances of medicine, deathly epidemics are more menacing than ever before. Conflicts, exacerbated by economic disparities, nationalisms, and fundamentalisms, are raging in various parts of the world. The specter of a nuclear holocaust has become thinkable.”

Crikey, I would!



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Appeasement

How to tell if you're really a liberal...



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More to the point

is that it is not "white English people" the Labour Party, and the left in general, discriminate against, it is white men. If you're a woman, you can claim yourself to be part of a persecuted officially recognised Victim Group, no matter what colour you are.

It was revealed last year that Avon and Somerset Constab-ulary rejected 186 applications from white men on the grounds that they were already “over-represented” in the force. In the same way, London Mayor Ken Livingstone last month refused to endorse a series of nominations for the London Fire Authority because they were dominated by whites.

And whole towns are beginning to suffer state disapproval. Eighty administrative jobs in the Prison Service have recently been transferred from Corby in Northamptonshire to Leicester because, as the Home Office admitted, Corby’s population is predominantly “white British”, a terrible sin in our multicultural society.

It is a bitter irony that the Labour Government, which works itself into such a synthetic rage over racial prejudice, should practise overt discrimination on an epic scale. The remorseless focus on supporting minorities has led to a perverted ideology of anti-white racism. 

Identity politics, another name for a shakedown. I remember another version of it. They used to call it "consciousness raising," but another word for it is "grievance-mongering." My mother became addicted to it, so I saw it up close and ugly in all its whining, snivelling, morally infantilising glory.



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Still banging the old drum

"So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage."

"Humanely"... is that like, disintegration chambers, or what? 

I always say the same thing to these people,

"You go first, Indie."



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Someone's mad at me

for being... well... me.

I have been saving this little gem for a rainy blog day. You remember the other day when I was musing briefly about isolation and what it does to you. The context, I believe, was the weird spectacle of the "official" mourning activities being filmed and enforced in the world's most isolated state, North Korea. I was thinking about it because I had also been musing on what sort of conditions one has to have to ensure that an entire nation of 33 million people have ex-ACT-ly the same opinions on the usual range of, shall we say, reproductive issues.

Canada, you will remember, has a press and broadcast media that is almost entirely state-run or state-vetted. The CRTC ensures that nothing in broadcasts from radio or TV comes with anything other than the officially approved editorial position. Nearly every newspaper in the country is owned by the same company, that is a heavy funder of the Canadian Liberal Party, and of course, we can count on academia and film to do its bit in making sure that everyone adheres in lock-step to the Frankfurt-school, feminist, neo-marxist, Planned Parenthood, Our Bodies Our Selves marching orders. There really is no place in Canada where you can get away from this, it is a self-contained media bubble, or was until the internet came in.

I pondered this once many years ago. Canada seems to have an ideal situation to be used as a guinea pig in a big experiment on how to change a deeply conservative country into a nation of whiney welfare-state addicted leftists. Part of it is the low population to land mass ratio. Canada has the second largest landmass in the world, but a tiny population. The population centres, moreover, are very far-flung indeed. If you grow up in, say the Gaspe, you will without a doubt have to move to somewhere larger and more densely populated like Montreal to get a job and start your life. This trend tends to isolate individuals, separating them often by thousands of miles from their family and their communities of origin.

By rigid control of the media, by creating an atomised population who have only the official state-controlled line for information and no other sources of moral or social stability but the state, you have a population that is ripe for brainwashing.

How do you shift an entire nation to the left? Look at what has been done in Canada.

I was thinking about all this because of an interesting email from a young man whose prodigious skills as a Classical Realist painter had caught my attention. You may recall that I linked to David Gluck's blog, Painting Stuff to Look Like Stuff.

Delighted that I had found more Classical Realists to play with, who moreover live in Duncan BC not an hour from my birth place, you can imagine that I wasted no time in giving them a little extra boost. It never would have occurred to me that I was not worthy in their eyes to dare to link to their page.

I received one friendly commbox note from Mr. Gluck and then, honestly, more or less forgot about him.

What with getting the news that I am much less likely to die of cancer, dealing with the long-term side effects of chemotherapy, recovering from major abdominal surgery, dealing with the emotional and physical stresses of surgically induced premature menopause and suddenly finding myself in contact with a father whom I had assumed had forgotten all about me and from whom I had not heard since the early 1980s, ... oh, and trying to get back to work...you can imagine that Mr. Gluck was not prominent in my mind.

Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I received the following little note by email.

From: David Gluck
To: quicustodiet66@yahoo.ca
Sent: Monday, January 16, 2012 12:20:52 PM
Subject: please remove our link

Please remove the link of my blog from your blog. I must say at first I was excited to find a fellow BC Canadian realist who was supportive of what my wife and I were doing, but quite frankly after reading your blog, I am turned off. I cannot accept intolerance of gays, transgender individuals, woman's rights, etc. I also found it in very poor taste you are trying to draw a parallel between abortion and the holocaust (especially since many of my family members were wiped out in it). You seem like a very angry individual, and we do not want your followers bringing that sort of hatred to our our blog. Thank you.

David Gluck

ps. You may also want to consider removing Sadie Valerie as well considering she is a huge supporter of gay rights and marriage. In addition, I am friends with most of the artists on your links section and I cannot say they would approve of your blog either.

(emphasis added)

A pariah in the Classical Realist world! Dear me. Having other things on my mind, I responded somewhat tersely,

I'll do whatever you like, but I'm disappointed that a fellow adherent to the Classical Realist revival is so narrow minded as to be unable to disagree on politics in a civil way.

I'm always shocked at the ingrained intolerance of the left.

Very disappointed.

H. White

He replied,

"On Mon, Jan 16, 2012 at 10:13 AM, David Gluck wrote:
Trust me when I say this is me being as civil as humanly possible. I sent you a personal message as opposed to posting anything on your blog that was negative and I was very polite in the manner in which I did it. By the way, I find it a stretch to call someone who is accepting of people for who they are "narrow-minded."

Yesterday, I found out that he must be lurking about here because I received the following, "I asked you very politely to take me off of your blog. Please take me off the links section immediately. Thank you."

I thought of all sorts of replies, (like, Good grief boy, I've really got other things to think about...) but then I thought I would put it to my readers what my response ought to be. (I also considered "friending" him on Facebook, but worried that his little head would explode.)

I have thought about writing back to explain that in the world of grown-ups it is possible not only to disagree civilly on political matters, but to remain close friends with people for many years who differ radically on such issues. It is often difficult, but with the application of charity, forbearance, kindness and forgiveness, and a habit of keeping one's own faults and failings firmly before one's eyes, (I realise these are rare traits in the lefty world, but I have met them there) it is possible greatly to benefit by maintaining contact with people outside one's own political bubble.

Faithful chorus, please discuss.

(I ask only that you do not bother the poor fellow at home. No emails please or commbox messages at his place please.)



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The Five Slogans

Some years ago, I started taking pro-life apologetics training courses in which I was taught how to make the case against abortion, staying strictly away from feelings ("feewings") religion or personal preferences.

I've talked before about S.L.E.D. and if you missed it, go here. I'm not going through it all again.

But I post the link to this thing in the Martlet, the student paper of the University of Victoria, (Yaaaaay!) where the Sled thing was used fairly effectively. It is interesting to note how far and how fast Scott's stuff is spreading in Canada, probably mostly due to the work of these two people (and now all their little friends) who founded this organisation (Watch out, scary pics on the opening page of this site). (We all took the course together in ... um... can't remember, maybe about 2000?... and the Canadian org. was formed while we all sat around the coffee table in a cabin on an island in the middle of a lake in New Jersey. It was fun.)

But I thought the most interesting part of the Martlet thing were the comments. A number of people chimed in saying why the argument against abortion is invalid. Fair enough. We believe in freedom of speech around here, (Ha ha!, not really...) and I note that the pro-aborts' arguments have been quite effectively addressed by others writing in. (Which is the point of this post ... which I keep forgetting.)

All the things they said are things that Scott listed as the same things people ALWAYS say in defence of abortion. Scott told us that they absolutely never come up with any other ones. (And the fun bit is that they really, really think they are being great independent thinkers, thinking these things up for themselves. Really!)

But I'm not kidding when I say they always say the exact same things. A.L.W.A.Y.S. and E.X.A.C.T.L.Y. the same things. It's amazing. I've been keeping track. On the few occasions I have been able to stomach reading this stuff, that is. Frankly, in recent years, it has really bored the crap out of me.

But when he told us, I thought Scott had to be exaggerating. It just seems impossible that an entire cultural movement (perhaps anti-cultural), one that has resulted in the deaths of 50 million people in the US alone, and is responsible for putting bajillions of dollars into the greedy blood-soaked mitts of the abortion industrialists.

All those lives, and just five slogans. Five.

- woman has a right to choose

- abortion should be a decision between a woman and her doctor

- woman has a right to bodily autonomy/privacy

- you can't bring unwanted/poor children into the world

- I wouldn't have an/am personally opposed to abortion, but I can't impose my personal beliefs on others (also, when you're standing on the sidewalk with a sign, "How DARE YOU try to impose your beliefs on MEEEE!!!! EVIL FACIST!"...)

All others, or actually "others," are just variations on this. Really. Try it yourself. The "rape exception" thing, the "overpopulation" thing, the "abortion is safer than childbirth thing," the "foetus is just potential life" thing, the "violinist" thing, etcetera, etcetera ad nauseum....whatevs.

One of my all time favourite bits of nonsense is the variation that starts, "if you don't have a uterus, you can't have an opinion..."

Rilly, I'm not even making it up...

"If you do not have a uterus, I don't believe you have any right to dictate what my body can and will be used for in regarding to pregnancy. I am not an incubator, I am a human being with rights to my own body and my own choices..."

blah blah blabbity blahblahblah...

(It's amazing, but even more, she goes on...

"Also, I believe it is most likely safe to assume you don't have a uterus. Therefore, why do you think you should have any say on a uterus bearer's body? I say UTERUS BEARER, because not all women have a uterus, and not all people with a uterus are women...."

Wwwhhheeeeeee!!!!!

Unbelievable...)

Srlsly. They're all on the list. Go check it out. Think of it as a training exercise.



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If only the evil old Catholic Church would let priests marry...

oh, wait...



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Fat Man and Little Boy

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Remember when we were kids and in school they told us all about how the Bomb was going to kill us all, in fact, wipe out all life on planet earth down to the microbial level?

Remember when "If you love this planet" was sent round to all the high schools and we would go on ban the bomb rallies as part of our civics classes?

When "every fifteen minute period could be your last"?

They told us that the worst thing that could possibly happen was the Bomb. The end of the world, and all that.

We were told that atom bombs were "radioactive" (though I note that no one ever actually bothered to define it...we thought microwave ovens were radioactive too) and where they fell, no one and nothing could live for twenty or thirty or fifty thousand years after...

The early bombs were pretty "dirty" it is true. They caused a lot of long-term medical problems in the people who were in the vicinity and survived the first blast.
So,

how many people live in Hiroshima today?

Just askin...


Wiki: "By 1955, the city's population had returned to pre-war levels."



~

Ooo! I have a question!

Pick me! Pick me!


"Well, when I said debate, I didn't mean debate!

Happy BirthEarth-day Lenin!

Yep, "Earth Day" is indeed a communist plot.

One of the smaller ones, admittedly.

Today, the so-called "environmental movement" he helped spawn has devolved from a gaggle of unwashed adolescent peaceniks into a slick cadre of leftists, lobbyists and lawyers. The result of this devolution has been an enormous hidden tax on American products and services -- more than a trillion dollars last year -- in the form of runaway environmental regulation.

Actually, I've seen the left in Rome, and they're still pretty much a bunch of unwashed, unshaven adolescent peaceniks who can join the manifestazione at two pm on a Wednesday because none of them have jobs.

So, in the name of monarcy, hierarchy, patriarchy and generally of Christian civilization,

burn down a tree today.

I'm afraid you have a dire case of emotional manipulation

Interesting.

I have just been informed that the Population Research Institute has issued another video cartoon explaining their stand that the world is in fact in imminent danger of being seriously underpopulated. I think these videos are a very effective project. They give the facts, the numbers, and encourage people to think about things.

This approach (facts and thinking) seems to contrast sharply with the work of the population control movement/enviro-nutters who tell us that the reason the cute polar bears are falling of those shrinking ice floes is that there are too many (brown) people being born. And no, it doesn't have to make sense. What are you, some kind of thinky person? Don't you have a soul?

Oh, and by the way,

Shut up.

Let's compare, shall we?


We start off with a rather eerie drama in which a husband gives a huge electricity bill to his pregnant wife. She asks, apparently despairing, "Oh no! How will we have enough left to feed the children now?" (all of whom are crying...see, babies cry all the time, right? That's why no one likes them). Then a parade of greyish zombie-babies is crawling along a landscape of ugly new powerplants, which gout smoke and make the world generally nasty. This is followed by a depiction of a crowd of Chinese people on top of the Great Wall. The crowd is so huge, we are led to believe, that there isn't enough room to stand on the Wall, so people are asphixiating and falling off. The scene switches to a picture of penguins falling off calving icebergs and into the hostile freezing cold water (poor little penguins...much cuter than babies!). Then, somewhat inexplicably, a group of people (old people, I note) are locked in a burning house.

Observe also that there is no narration. No explanation or documentation is offered. These are merely images, literally cartoon versions of the propaganda slogans that have been offered by the population/eco-loonies to argue that we should have more abortion and to which we are expected to respond emotionally. But of course, any presentation of the facts of any of the situations being symbolised by the cartoons would be a bit of a problem for the sloganeers.

So let's stop for a moment and examine the claims.

First: "As long as humans keep reproducing, the demand for power will outstrip the supply. We'll have to keep building power plants that cause all kinds of environmental degradation."

Sed Contra, the world's power consumption is being met. People are clever little monkeys and usually solve problems like this without too much trouble. That's why we pay engineers so much money. Power plants that burn coal no longer produce sulfuric acid, for example. Acid rain is a thing of the past. Same goes for the food production problem that so exercised the mind of Thomas Malthus. You will note that, despite the hysterical shrieking of Paul Erlich, the world did not die of hunger in the 1970s. I was there, and I remember eating things just fine. The solution was what we now call the Green Revolution. People thought up clever ways of solving the food production problem.

Second: "See? China is horribly overpopulated and if we don't cut back our baby-making activities, we're going to end up like them."

This one is just silly. In the 1970s, the Chinese Commie government bought the whole "population=poverty" line that was then the favourite slogan of the Malthusians and decided that they would control their population by force 'cause that's the way to get things done in Commiethink, saves so much money and time that would otherwise be wasted trying to convince people to go along. So they instituted the One Child policy. Any woman, in their extremely regulated and watched society, who showed up to work pregnant without a license was, ahem...shall we say "urged" to report quickly to the "family planning agency" to get the problem looked after. Those babies who were born illicitly were often killed by state family planning agents looking to their own careers and necks if they allowed violations to go unaddressed. (This also made it possible for the state to eliminate the problem of Down's syndrome and a few other congenital trouble-spots. A Chinese obstetrician told a visiting American doctor that there really was no problem with Down's in China: "Those ones don't make it out of the delivery room".)

The only trouble, from the Commie point of view, is that now they have gone through 40-odd years of this, there just really aren't that many young people bringing up the rear. Moreover, sex-selection, made possible by ultrasounds, has given the Chinese a much bigger problem. They've killed off quite a significant percentage of the girls. And, barring unforseen advances in artificial reproduction methods, (which, frankly I don't put past them), you still need women to make your population go.

Now, the Chinese government, about one generation too late, is starting to worry. You've got the inverted pyramid in which huge numbers of old people are going to have to be supported by an ever-shrinking number of up-and-coming young workers.

And to add insult to injury, because the Chinese economy has been so successful recently, and because of the social and cultural changes that have been imposed by the economy-minded government, these young folk have learned that it is more fun to work for themselves, buy all the nice new things, and have a fun life than look after their crotchety old relatives.

They've been very successful westernisers over there, in short.

The Chinese "government" (as it is usually referred to in the media) has rather belatedly realised that they need to encourage people to have more children. I don't suppose they ever thought their efforts to change people's minds would be so successful. In Shanghai last year, officials were dismayed that their public pro-child campaign had been met with opposition from young people who feel that they ought to be allowed to enjoy their lives without the burden of looking after mum and dad. The state does that kind of thing right?

Third: The penguin/polar bear thing.

Uh, guys? Penguins can swim, hey? So can polar bears.

You knew that right?

Did you know that everyone knows that?

Fourth: The old people being burned alive in a crowded house thing.

Actually, I got nothin' here. Just doesn't seem to mean anything. So... ummm....


Aaanyway...

the most interesting part comes at the end. The Sun says to the Earth, "I'm afraid you have a dire case of overpopulation."

The Earth asks the question: "Is there anything you can do?"

The question remains unanswered, and the image of the earth fades leaving a diapered baby with the caption, "We can all help prevent this. Make the Green Choice".

Interesting choice of words there, hey?

What, exactly is being proposed here?

Obviously abortion, but what about the people who are already born?

As I always like to say to people who advocate reducing the world's surplus population, "You go first, Indie," we'll be right behind you.


Compare that video with the one below and see if you can spot the difference.

Spot the difference?

(BTW, did you catch the brief flash of the Spinster Cat-Lady? I laughed, but perhaps somewhat hollowly at that one...)

Ok, so let's see if I've got this straight,

Everyone who holds "conservative," that is, traditionally Christian, beliefs about sex and all that, is a "bigot".

My Church is not a safe haven for bigots ...I was hoping that the Church’s antipathy to female and openly gay priests would, in time, weaken and dissolve. Now instead, it seems, a whole lot of bigoted reinforcements are arriving to galvanise those more unpalatable aspects of Roman Catholic doctrine. Should I stay in a club that would welcome these people as members?

Am I getting it right?

Ummm...

isn't that,

well,

kind of

bigoted?

Diogenes grins evilly:

there's no question but that it's got the right people pouting. Across the board, among Catholics, Anglicans, and neutral spectators, hostility varies inversely with orthodoxy.

So gracious

Ah the left. Always to be counted on for good manners and graciousness:

Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, said: “This is dismal news indeed. Why Britain should seek to laud such a nasty extremist is beyond me. We should not forget that his ‘teachings’ have resulted in the banning of condoms in developing countries where HIV is decimating the populations. He encourages population growth in places where starvation is common. He persecutes homosexuals, treats women as second class citizens, has colluded in the large-scale cover up of child abuse. His Church interferes illegitimately in politics and undermines democracy. It siphons huge amounts of money out of poverty-stricken economies – what is there to celebrate about such a bigot? The NSS will be joining other groups in protesting against the celebration of this ghastly man’s presence here.”

There's no consistency like politically convenient consistency

I don't know if the whole Berlusconi vs. Avvenire vs. L'Osservatore Romano vs. la Repubblica thing has made international headlines. I've mostly been ignoring it, but I thought this

The campaign of accusations against Berlusconi's private life was ignited in mid-June by his second wife – from whom he is separating – and above all by "la Repubblica," the leading newspaper of the Italian left, which, paradoxically, has always preached liberation from the bonds of Catholic morality.

was funny.

Ah the left: wouldn't know a principle if one jumped up and bit them on the nose.

Parallels

Had Soviets on the brain lately.

This is interesting. The photo above is of Ivan Burylov, a bee keeper.

Seeking the appearance of democracy, the Soviet Union held elections, but only one Communist Party candidate appeared on the ballot for each office. Fear of punishment ensured that nearly all Soviet citizens “voted” by taking their ballot and ceremoniously placing it into a ballot box. In 1949, Ivan Burylov, a beekeeper, protested this absurd ritual by writing the word “Comedy” on his so-called secret ballot. Soviet authorities linked the ballot to Burylov and sentenced him to eight years in camps for this crime.

How quickly we forget

Someone, some time said something along the lines of "To know history is to be Catholic". Well,I don't know, but apparently to know no history is a requirement of being a believing Atheist.

Fr. Tim has a photo of the latest thing in Atheistwear. A T-shirt bearing the logo, "No one has ever been stoned to death by atheists."

The last word, so to speak.

Dumb leftist moans about democracy

"Why are mayors causing so much trouble?"

Peter Davies, a retired schoolteacher who was recently elected mayor of Doncaster, believes the UK should learn lessons in family values from the Taliban – saying they encourage order and enjoy decent "family affairs". In charge of a £586m budget, Davies also believes climate change is a con and councils should scrap their support for everything from bus lanes to gay pride festivals.

Well, in the case of this one, mostly because he was elected by a majority of the voting public instead of being appointed by an oligarchy of southpaws.

It used to be loony left local government that attracted ridicule. Now it is the outpourings of mad mayors.

No. It still is the loony left.

How dare they!

It's a funny thing about "liberals". I was raised hearing the refrain every day, "You have the right to do anything you want."

...except the things you're not allowed to do, of course. But who'd want to do any of that stuff anyway?!

"Funny how my fellow liberals preach tolerance and choice until they disagree with someone else's decisions."