Michael Blackburn: ‘The problem Marxists have is that they can’t cope with anything that doesn’t fit neatly into their intellectual plan of the universe; that accounts for their difficulty dealing with reality. The problem with most politicians is that they are pretty stupid but think they aren’t – that and the fact that they’re inveterate meddlers who can’t leave anything alone. We’d all be better off if both groups were subject to frequent bouts of creative destruction. Or just destruction in the case of the former.’
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Michael Blackburn: ‘We’ve had enough snow. It doesn’t take much in Britain. A day or two of it lying around on field, farm, housing estate and rooftops is sufficient for us to enjoy its transient beauty and to be reminded of childhood pleasures. More than that is an imposition.’
Michael Blackburn: Will Self doesn’t have to stick his nose outside the media bubble he inhabits…which is why he can go on to make the astonishing claim that the last Labour government implicitly played the race card and “triangulated” on immigration. The fact that Labour deliberately engineered mass immigration into the country with the intention of changing the culture seems to have eluded His Immense Braininess.
Michael Blackburn: ‘today if you wish to catch a politician out and subject them to a bit of mockery the easiest thing to do is get them to make a comment about everyday life – everyday life as the rest of us live it, that is. Pasties, the price of milk, tv programmes, bands – they’re all minefields for the clodhoppers in the Commons. Any comment by a politician (presumably guided by some overpaid PPE graduate in the role of adviser) about music, for example, is guaranteed to provoke ridicule. They’ll either come up with something that’s blatantly nonsensical or just weird.’
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Wednesday, 27 February 2013
Michael Blackburn: ‘I wanted to know what this fugitive memory was. It may have been some little treasure of a moment that had not seen the light of consciousness before. It may possibly have been my ramshackle memory going off at half-cock, like an aged librarian in an ageing library that’s accumulated so much material there’s no way either organise it or sift through it any more.’
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Michael Blackburn: ‘The source of this scandal is twofold: idiotic bureaucracy from the EU; and criminality. The latter is with us always, which is why we have the law. The former, unfortunately, will be with us for a few more years yet, as will the simpletons who can’t see how much trouble it causes, even as they demand more regulation. And that’s what we’ll get – more regulation and more unintended consequences.’
Thursday, 14 February 2013
Michael Blackburn: ‘Of course, I may be suffering the same illusion as everyone else in the poetry ghetto, that there’s a way out, that we’re not just muttering to ourselves. I’m not bothered any more if that is the case but I still like the idea that someone, somewhere is taking a look at the poems and enjoying what they see. If the only way to make that happen is to use the latest technology and expect no payment, then why not? As Rimbaud said more than a century ago, “Il faut être absolument moderne”, so let us be absolutely modern.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘THERE’S ONE GROUP of people you don’t get to meet in Borgen: the people. Given the focus of the programme – ie the Danish equivalent of the Westminster bubble – that’s almost inevitable but it’s still telling. There’s an awful lot of pious mouthing about the Denmark “we” want to build; and how “we” want to cherish “our” welfare state, and “we” want to be working towards a “Common Future”, etc. In the realm of political-media doublespeak “we” means those in power; “we” as in “not you, the voters, because you’re too thick to understand”. Inadvertently, Borgen reflects the view that politicians and media have of the populace as mere bit players.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘The adoption of inappropriate business practices, however, combined with the demands of political correctness, made dealing with the Arts Council (and its various regional subsidiaries) a nightmare of box-ticking and form-filling. Controversy, when it ever arose, would still conform to the hard left dogmas of identity politics. Mediocrity was often, and still is, the result.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘When it comes to food, the shopper is always innocent (and gullible). There’s never any expectation that the individual should exercise initiative or responsibility for their actions. It’s always the supermarkets to blame. Because they advertise and we’re too stupid to see that they’re trying to sell us something. Because they offer us stuff that we like, and lots of it, at prices we find acceptable? And that’s bad?’
Michael Blackburn: ‘ When young people are texting each other, or are online, playing multiplayer games, sending and receiving messages, photos, having conversations, they’re indulging in that most human of activities: they’re communicating. They’re just being human.’
Michael Blackburn: ‘As Robin McKie says, referring to Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel, published in 1997: “The book’s message is simple but politically charged: there is nothing special or innately superior about western people. They are not the master race. They are simply geographically privileged.” There you have it, neatly packaged for the politically correct: “geographically privileged”. Aristotle, Archimedes, Plato, Einstein, Brunel, Locke, Newton, Voltaire, Faraday, Vergil – you’re nothing special, you’re just geographically privileged. Shame on you for being so lucky!’
Michael Blackburn: ‘As for living standards, only the most historically ignorant would deny that it hasn’t raised them. Unfortunately it doesn’t stop the whingers in the comments section from claiming they’ve suddenly found themselves back in Dickensian Britain. It would help if they’d read Dickens, of course.’
Wednesday, 26 December 2012
Michael Blackburn: ‘Different times, different customs. You can’t do anything about that. Judging an issue like this from the past through the lens of our current morality is wrong-headed. Who’s to say that in fifty years some of the most dearly held opinions of the politically correct won’t be viewed as puerile or ridiculous?’
Our closet imperialists.
Michael Blackburn: ‘It’s telling, of course, that neither Colley nor Naughton admit the imperial dimension of the EU itself, a dimension openly acknowledged by the Commission’s oily president, Mr Barroso. That would rather spoil their argument.’