Rats or New Barbarians?

Posted by: Ian Angell

According to today’s newspapers, WPP, the advertising giant is considering a move to Eire in order to escape the UK’s increasingly complex and expensive tax regime. This comes fast on the heels of the non-dom tax fiasco. A decade ago I was warning that a time was soon approaching when companies would be jumping ship in large numbers to escape penal taxation. All taxation is theft, and if firms tire of being ripped off then they will simply move! When will British idiot socialist politicians realize they do not have the power to intimidate global corporations. Escaping ‘UK Inc.’, these companies are not rats leaving a sinking ship {although it is sinking}, they are simply taking on the role of New Barbarians.

Let me quote a few paragraphs from my book The New Barbarian Manifesto:

A spectre is haunting the Globe – the spectre of New Barbarians. All the Powers of the old world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcize this spectre of enlightened self-interest: churches and monarchies, capitalists and socialists, populists totalitarian nationalists, militarists, and spies for the state.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as self-interest by its opponents in power? Where the Opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of self-interest, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Two things result from this fact:
I. The New Barbarism is already acknowledged by all World Powers to be itself a Power.
II. It is high time that New Barbarians should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of New Barbarians with a Manifesto.
{With apologies to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, authors of The Communist Manifesto.}

“We all have two choices: follow ‘new barbarians’ and advance to an uncertain future, or obey ‘old barbarians’ and their fundamentalist gospel of a false past. The new barbarians represent the winners in the new economic reality, leaving the losers to circle their wagons around old values and rituals, easy prey for the old barbarians. The outcome of their coming battle will be a world of three zones. The First World is the libertarian realm of new barbarians that supports the rights of the individual, not of the tribe. The Second World is an uneasy compromise between old barbarian ideologies and the modern world. Their mode of governance focuses exclusively on the rights of the collective. Might is right in the Third World, a place of terror and repression. Putting it brutally, the three worlds are an open society, a closed society and no society.

If trapped in the two lesser Worlds, you will be forced to conform to old barbarian rituals. Therefore, you must throw in your lot with the new barbarians. The alternative is to be left to the mercy of the masses, forced to accept the mind control of religious, political and ethnic bigotry – or suffer the consequences. The history of every human society has been of the tension between the individual and the collective, between the self and the tribe, between private aspirations and social norms. Today you are again faced with the three evils of religion, ethnicity and socialism. You must flee to the First World of ‘Smart Regions’, to prosper in a climate of individualism and of intellectual and financial freedom. Should such individuals fail to escape in large enough numbers, then a new Dark Age will engulf us all.

Welcome to the future. Welcome to the ‘Brave New World’ of The New Barbarian Manifesto.”

Politician Jokes

In this blog I’ve brought together some of the jokes about politicians that I’ve collected over the years. Just like Will Rogers, in my writings I don’t make jokes about politicians, I just watch them and report the facts. So I really shouldn’t be asking for more political jokes, I’ve seen too many of them get elected. However, if you have any more please let me know.

You just can’t win these days. Do something wrong and you get fined; do something right and you get taxed. You work six months a year for the government. Even government employees don’t work that much.

Nothing is certain except death and taxes. Only death isn’t an annual event, and governments can’t make death any worse than it is. Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on supper. Taxation without representation may be tyranny, but it’s a lot cheaper than the alternative. That’s why I don’t vote for someone, I vote against the rest. If you’ve half a mind to read their manifestos, that’s all you’ll need. Although, if voting could change anything, it would be made illegal.

There is only one way to look at a politician, and that’s down. You can always tell when a politician’s is lying: his lips are moving. A politician will double-cross a bridge when he comes to it, so that he will always be there when he needs you.

Criminals take the money and run. Politicians run and take the money. Parliament is like a bunch of bananas; not a straight one among them. I’ve got a lot of friends in politics. They’re the best money can buy. That’s not strictly true. There are some honest politicians. They are the ones who, once bought, stay bought. It’s a shame how the 99% give the 1% a bad name.

So please send me any new jokes. I’ve had to shelve quite a few since John Prescott is no longer Deputy Prime Minister: How do you recognize John Prescott’s PC? It’s the one with Tippex on the screen.

Then there are the oldies but goldies;
A surgeon, a gardener, and a politician were walking down the street when they saw a ‘lady of ill repute’. The surgeon said “of course, surgery is the oldest profession. Surgical skill was needed to remove Adam’s rib in order to create Eve.” The second quipped “and where did the Garden of Eden come from? Only a gardener could make order out of the chaos.” “And who do you think created the chaos?” said the politician.