An independent Kent isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds - Spectator Coffee House, September 24, 2020

 

An independent Kent isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds
Patrick West


The news that a Brexit border will be introduced for lorry drivers entering Kent has aroused hilarity and derision among some Remainers. These critics see in Kent the personification of all that is parochial and plebeian. Horrible old Kent, with its proles who epitomise Little England at its most execrable and risible. The truth is that we people of Kent won't be too flustered by this new development. Many of us will actually welcome the Sussex/Kent divide.

For too long our county, the oldest in England, has been the playboy playground of rich Londoners and Sussex/Surrey county types who have descended on our wonderful chaff fields and cliffs, wading their cash around, buying up houses that they rarely occupy, or maybe live in for two or three weekends every summer.

Sure, I may be one the many ex-Londoners who has settled here, but at least I have done so properly and permanently for years now. Nowhere are second-home owners more conspicuous than in east Kent.

And there is the other case of people breaching Kent's borders, via the English Channel. Those who come from France and settle here place a burden on schools and hospitals. No-one here in Folkestone or Margate has a grievance with foreigners. It's just not being able to understand your neighbours that really grates. There is literally something alienating about not understanding what people around you are saying.

I'm being facetious, of course. Kent folk are the most generous and English people around, like Yorkshire types; more English than English. But those smug, remote people who think it's amusing to guffaw at the prospect of Kent independence inadvertently expose their own metropolitan ignorance. People outside London do care about their country and have an inherent patriotism, and they do care about where they live. This is because we are the somewhere people from somewhere, not the anybody people from anywhere.

Yes, we in Kent may want to erect walls. But don't all householders want to erect walls and lock doors? Proper caring neighbourhoods always want to put up walls. It's because they care about all that they hold dear. Show me someone who doesn't lock their door at night or someone who bewails the walls of their house and I'll show you a hypocrite.

We have always welcomed incomers who want to immigrate here, from Lithuanians to Poles, and we have seen the sons and daughters of these immigrants learn English and teach their children English and integrate with those who live here. That's because many of us came from London areas where we lived among eastern Europeans, and where eastern Europeans learned to live with others from ethnic minorities. If you want to see an exemplar of an English-Polish multicultural society, come to Dover.

Many of us Kent folk tolerate the derision from the metropole for the same reason that we don't like them: there is a manifest feeling that for years they have looked down upon us. This is why we vote Ukip. This is why we voted Brexit. This is why so many Labour heartlands voted Tory. We were fed up of being condescended. And this is why a lot of naturally Labour heartlands in Kent will continue to vote against the metropolitan elite: we hate being laughed at, for being mocked as silly Kent people. We are at the beginning and end of England.

And we care about Brexit; we care about the effect a no-deal Brexit will have. We care about it because we have felt the brunt of immigration for decades now, in a way that those in London and beyond have not. From Herne Bay to Folkestone, from Margate to Dover, we have seen our societies changing. We are at the front line.

This is why Kent independence isn't such a ridiculous idea as it sounds. It's only as absurd as what's been going on in the past decades with the British working-class, lower-middle class and even the middle class. We've had enough of you. And if our answers seem silly, it's because your questions have been silly. So Viva Kent Independencia if you must. It's not merely a joke. On anyone's behalf.

Transgenderism: the great delusion of our time - Spiked, February 28, 2020

Transgenderism: the great delusion of our time

One day it will be studied alongside witch-hunts and alien abductions.

Patrick West


The recent remark by Dawn Butler, shadow secretary of state for women and equalities, that ‘a child is born without sex’ is certainly one of the most bizarre things said by a politician in my lifetime. It is surprising that it hasn’t attracted more derision than it deserves. Or perhaps it isn’t. The transgender myth – that one’s actual sex, not one’s gender, is entirely of one’s own choosing – is firmly embedded as the definitive popular delusion of the 21st century. It will take future historians of a more rational age to assess it more soberly and explain its origins.

My theory is that it is the consequence of what might be called the Discrimination Dialectic. Our society is constantly at war with itself between two conflicting imperatives: the need to have an Other (every culture needs one) who we can define ourselves against and be mean about, and our more contemporary, and culturally specific, progressive imperative to ceaselessly end discrimination against minorities and erstwhile Others. This dialectic involves identifying, or maybe even inventing, the next Other in order to emancipate them.

When I was very young it was still acceptable to be a misogynist – television comedians still made jokes about wives and mothers-in-law – and it was acceptable in certain circles to be racist. Homophobia was even more mainstream well into the 1980s, when ‘poof’ and ‘homo’ were unremarkable playground insults.

Going back further, misogyny, racism and homophobia were all pretty mainstream in the 1960s. They are all taboo today. Most people under 30 probably don’t even know that Irish jokes were commonplace until the 1980s. So what discriminated Other should our society campaign for now? What minority can we be progressive about now? Trans people, it transpires.

It is owing to our culture’s cult of progress, and the liberal-left’s compulsion of forever ending discrimination, that the trans movement has captured the Labour Party so virulently. While Butler’s remark raised some eyebrows, a recent statement by the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, raised none, when he asserted that ‘Trans women are women. Trans men are men.’ Another transparent falsehood. A trans woman is a trans woman.

Trans is a powerful myth, which explains how it demands some curious mental gymnastics and strange doctrines. First was the notion that by having cosmetic surgery you can change your sex. (You can’t, because you can’t change your chromosomes or biology. I never have and never will menstruate or give birth.) Then came the idea that you can change your sex through performative utterance, by merely declaring you have done so. And now comes the literally – literally – unreal dogma that babies have no sex.

Most people, especially those of a woke persuasion, like to ridicule Christian creationists who believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old. They are certainly irritating, such is their wilful, wanton resistance to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence for evolution. True trans believers have become intolerable for exactly the same reason: their flight from reality and denial of not just science, but also what is staring them in the face. You don’t even need a doctor to tell what sex a baby is.

The trans movement began as an extension of the gay-rights movement. But since gays are nearly totally accepted now, it has usurped it. It has since morphed into something more uncanny: a modern-day cult. It’s an ersatz new religion, hence the doctrine among its believers that ‘transphobia’ is a most grievous transgression. Look, too, at the way people demand that strangers use pronouns of their choosing. And regard the degree to which people have internalised ‘transphobia’ as a modern-day blasphemy against this religion, a heresy against the church of trans, with so many people terrified to speak openly and honestly about it.

It is nothing more than a case of hysteria, a modern-day delusion, a phenomenon that one day will – or should – be studied alongside witch-hunts and alien abductions.


Poaching poorer countries’ nurses

While the debate in the UK about migration, NHS staffing and low-paid employment focuses on immigration levels from the EU, it is worth considering the matter of emigration out of EU member states. An article in Labour Heartlands last week tells us that since Poland joined the EU in 2004, around 20,000 trained nurses have left the country. Of the 280,000 that remain today, only 42,000 of them are under the age of 40, with the average age being 51. In 2015, Poland had 5.2 nurses and 2.3 doctors per 1,000 citizens. ‘The country’s health-care system is chronically underfunded.’

The majority of nurses and doctors who come to the UK for employment come from countries poorer than ours. Yet it is these states that have paid for or facilitated their education. We are further impoverishing these countries by taking their labour. If our unwillingness to train our own doctors and nurses has been deplorable, poaching them from poorer countries is profoundly shameful.


Three cheers for Big Pharma

Last March I developed a case of intense itching on my back and backside. Presuming it to be the re-emergence of the eczema that tormented me as a child, I thought it could be remedied with cream. But no cream seemed to solve it. Nor did changing diet or clothing. Consequently, I have spent the past 11 months constantly scratching myself, leaving my skin scarred and myself in considerable pain. My concentration has at times been consequently shot, leaving me periodically unable to read or write.

After a particularly savage scratch attack two Saturdays ago, I had a doctor come round. I had already suspected it wasn’t eczema – I didn’t recognise the unpleasant smell. I suspected it was something worse. It turns out it wasn’t. It was a fungal infection all along. He gave me a prescription for a dose of antibiotics. The fungus is now gone, the pain is subsiding and the scars are healing.

I consequently feel obliged to state that ‘I ♥ the NHS’. But I must also add that ‘I ♥ Big Pharma’. In an age in which we are meant to hate greedy corporations (‘Big’ with a capital ‘b’ has become a pejorative adjective in itself), it is time to give some respect to the pharmaceutical corporations that invent these wonderful drugs.

So thank you to Pfizer, who patented fluconazole in 1981, to the inventors of flucloxacillin, patented in 1961, and to the Schering Corporation that launched prednisone on to the market in 1955.

Spiked, January 25, 2019

In defence of walls

Borders are about security, not exclusion.

Spectator Blogs, December 8, 2016

The mystery of Kent's disappearing Polish shops

Patrick West

Spiked, September 9, 2016

Climate change is not a political issue
The environment has been hijacked by both left and right

Spiked, February 26, 2016

The EU is well past its sell-by date

We don’t need Brussels to stave off another World War.

Spiked November 20, 2015

'I stand with Paris, but...'
We must engage with the real motivation behind the Paris attacks.

Spiked, October 16, 2015

Germany: the new sick man of Europe
If the French are saying your country's in crisis, you know you're in trouble.

in Spiked, September 18, 2015

Something must be done (so that I can sleep at night)
Caitlin Moran’s crocodile tears will do nothing to help migrants.

in Spiked, September 11, 2015

Refugee crisis: Germany’s Band Aid?
By embracing migrants, Germany is getting over its war guilt.

In Left Foot Forward, November 27, 2004

The St George's Cross has become an emblem of the working class

in The Catholic Herald, March 8, 2013

Hitler and the Tsar's loss 
was Britain's gain
Newcomers' Lives
edited by Peter Unwin
Bloomsbury, £16.99
review by Patrick West

When it recently emerged that Polish had become England’s second language, owing to immigration in the past 10 years, the Times published an article on famous Poles who had achieved success outside their homeland. They included, among others, Roman Polanski, Paul Newman and Karol Wojtyła. Surprisingly, as a letter in the newspaper consequently pointed out, the piece failed to mention a Pole called Conrad Korzeniowski, who after coming to England became Joseph Conrad.
     The omission of the author, who found acclaim – remarkably – by writing in a third language, was also striking in that Conrad features in a collection of Times obituaries of notable immigrants to Britain. From Lady Randolph Churchill to Freddy Mercury to Basil D'Oliveira, Newcomers’ Lives: The Story of Immigrants as Told In Obituaries from The Times reminds us that this island has long been a land of opportunity, a safe harbour, and that immigration to Britain, not least from other parts of Europe, has a long pedigree.
     Those of us who attended schools with a heavy proportion of Irish, Polish and Spanish pupils are aware of this story; indeed, most of us are part of it. And somewhat paradoxically, second-generation immigrants can be the most hostile to those who want to follow in their parents footsteps. An extensive Searchlight Educational Trust survey of 2011 showed that 39 per cent of Asian Britons wanted all immigration into Britain stopped permanently, compared to 34 per cent of white Britons and 21 per cent of black Britons. Many are today anxious about a potential influx of Romanians and Bulgarians, while the perceived Islamification of some inner-city areas is a worry to nearly everybody. Britain has never experienced such a radical demographic transition, but, immigration remains intrinsic to our island story. 
     Newcomers’ Lives opens with the death of Prince Albert, a Bavarian. As a genre, the newspaper obituary was in its infancy in 1861, and the Times’s death notice tells us little about his life, and concentrates, in morbid detail typical of the period, on the Consort’s last painful hours: “He continued slowly to sink, so slowly that the wrists were pulseless long before the last moment had arrived, when at a few minutes before eleven he ceased to breathe, and all was over. An hour after and the solemn tones of the great bell of St Paul’s – a bell of evil omen – told all the citizens how irreparable has been the loss their beloved Queen, how great the loss to the country.” 
    By contrast, the obituary of Karl Marx, “Prophet of the collapse of capitalism”, runs to only four paragraphs. Marx’s influence had yet to be realised fully in 1883, but it was often the case that Times obituaries in the Victorian era were either brief or incredibly long. 
    Such stylistic quirks can be telling. We read from 1988 that Alec Issigonis, the Greco-German creator of the Mini Cooper, “remained a bachelor all of his life”. According to a biographer, Jonathan Wood, Issigonis was a “non-practising homosexual”, yet one rarely reads today “bachelor” or “remained unmarried” as euphemisms for “gay”. “He is survived by his partner, John” has become the norm, much in the way “cancer” has supplanted “died after a long illness”. But in areas in which stigma remains, “convivial” is still code for a drunk, while a deceased who “didn’t suffer fools gladly” was intolerable.
    The death notices thus reveal much of the era in which they were written. In 1951 it is stated: “We are still too close to Wittgenstein to form a just estimate of his work.” This was during an era less given to journalistic hyperbole in high-brow newspapers, and when writers believed that sufficient time needed to elapse before posterity could be achieved. 
    Wittgenstein was but one of many bright minds to come to Britain from central Europe, including his cousin, Friedrich von Hayek. They met each other on the Italian front when both were serving in the Austrian army. The obituary of the famous monetarist is a highlight of the fascinating collection. Like Marx, Hayek was hopeless with his personal finances and he never made a penny in royalties from The Road to Serfdom. It is also heartening to read that, despite their differences, Hayek and Keynes enjoyed a good personal relationship, so much so that Keynes ensured his opposite was given rooms at King’s when the LSE was evacuated to Cambridge in the Second World War.
    Another brainy Austrian was Karl Popper, who, like so many to feature here, hailed from a Jewish background. Others of that faith include Sam Wanamaker, Isaiah Berlin, Yehudi Menuhin, the broadcaster Hugo Gryn, the philanthropist Paul Hamyln and those notoriously competitive Freud brothers, Clement and Lucian. This may or may not reinforce the old stereotype, favoured by philo-Semites and anti-Semites alike, of the innate intelligence of the Jewish people, but it certainly indicates that Tsarist Russia’s and Nazi’s Germany’s loss was our gain. 
    Moreover, the compendium reminds us that the story of European immigration to Britain hasn’t solely concerned plumbers and decorators.