The world financial crisis summarised in 1 sentence

Countries and individuals with bad credit ratings got mixed in with those with good ratings, ran up too much debt, and now countries and banks are collapsing because of it.

Merry Christmas

A merry Christmas to all my readers!

Thought of the moment: The future success of china

Many commentators are saying that the current increase in the wealth/success of china is going to continue in the near future, and it will eclipse the West. However, it seems to me that the recent economic success of China is predicated mainly on providing cheap manufacturing labour. But theres only so far that you can ride that train. What happens when wages go up? The owners of the companies will move the factories elsewhere, chasing the cheapest labour. What happens when robotic labour truly takes over from humans? The companies will then literally own the workers/

A drop in quality

At the weekend I was visiting an old-fashioned clothes shop in my home town in order to buy some shirts. Its old-fashioned in the sense that its independent, and run by the owner, and you get more personalised service. The shop has been going since the late 1800s, being kept in the family, but will likely close for good when the current owner retires, as his son isn't interested in taking it on. Anyway, I was talking to the owner about my work, and commuting to London daily, and he was telling me about when he used to commute in the 1970s, and how the train journey was more civilised and comfortable. As just one example: back then there was a proper buffet carriage, staffed by two stewards, serving hot food. Now there is a feeble 'cart' that some poor Eastern European pushes up and down the train, that serves just hot drinks, luke-warm drinks, and packaged snacks like chocolate bars and crisps. The shop-keeper was bemoaning a general collapse in quality across all areas of life - food, clothes, furniture, household goods - and said he felt sorry for young people today as they largely don't even know what good quality is, having little experience of it. How did we get into this position? Aren't we supposed to be richer than we were decades ago? Yet we put up with so many products and services of poorer quality.

Effects of fatherlessness

Message I left for the journalist Peter Hitchens in response to this blog post (scroll down a bit):

Dear Mr Hitchens

I applaud you for having the wit and courage to write about the bad effects of fatherlessness. I know you write about it regularly, however I think its even more important and more central to your overall concerns than it might seem. I contend that the father-led nuclear family is the keystone that held up our civilization. Remove it, and the whole edifice starts to crumble. Drug addiction, crime, higher taxes, feckless and antisocial behavior, and so on.

The mother’s role is given to her by nature, but the father’s role is given to him by civilization. Or, rather, when society gives men a sure, guaranteed role as fathers then we get civilization.

Feminists made it their stated goal from the beginning to destroy the nuclear family, saying that it represented the ‘patriarchal oppression of women’. Of course, it succeeded in destroying the nuclear family, undoubtedly aided and abetted by politicians and big corporations (who could derive power and profits from destroying it).

Give men a role as heads of families and you give them a motivation to work hard and be responsible. Take it away and you will see an decrease in the motivation of young men, not to mention: increase in taxes, increase in problems amongst children and the young (not just lack of male role models, but depression, drug abuse, crime and anti-social behavior), children will be more vulnerable (statistically, a step-father is more likely to abuse a child than a biological father) which itself leads to heightened, even hysterical, over-sensitivity to any adult-child interactions. Societies without the father-led nuclear family become ghettos, with miserable working women (often with children by different fathers), aimless men – usually sitting around drinking or doing drugs all day, and uncontrollable children.

I wish those who want a civilized and conservative society would wake up to the key role fatherhood plays. Solve this one problem and so many other problems would be dramatically lessened.

Thought of the moment

Currently, in many regions of the globe, we are seeing various outbreaks of civil unrest, in terms of unthinking rioting (London this summer), demonstrations against 'the system' (Greece, and the New York 'Occupy Wall Street' demos which are now spreading across the globe), and actual revolutions (the arab world). With the financial system seemingly breaking down across much of the Western world, I predict that this civil unrest is only going to escalate over the coming decade.

Whilst we live in such revolutionary times of change, there could be a better chance of men's rights activists in pushing forward some of the changes they would like to see. It seems to me that, whilst the banking systems are clearly in need of reform, the public in general is placing too much of the blame at the feet of the banks, and not enough blame on government overspending. The fact is that the Western countries are in trouble because they have been borrowing too much. The money that government spends, in the UK for example, on Welfare payments to single-mother-by-choice, on generous salaries and pensions to its own public-sector-employed staff (many of whom are in 'political' positions, forwarding a leftist, radical agenda, as opposed to doing practical, useful work), and in engaging in pre-emptory wars, far far exceeds that which they've spent on saving the banks. We need to start putting the case forward for reform to taxpayer's spending on these areas.

Misandry, the white feather campaign and World War 1

If the work of our finest War Poets is anything to go by, the target of their resentment was not so much the men at home as the women.

And yet feminists still manage to convince everyone that it was women who were uniquely oppressed in the past.

"The “feather girls” shared this delusion that the Great War was some glorious game. It was easy for them to accuse others of cowardice, knowing that they would never be forced to prove their own bravery."