Grave New World Order

Comrades, I’m angry and I’m scared.

It rained the other Saturday; Tynemouth had Hetton Lyons 79/4 at lunch when the skies opened over Preston Avenue. Another game, the sixth so far, to be lost to the elements in this cursedly damp summer. On the up side, there were a few new faces around; blokes inspired by England’s World Cup win to come down, have a few beers and watch their local club. In the absence of any play, we all had a good yarn about the Greatest Game (and by that I don’t just mean the final at Lords), to the extent I clean forgot about heading to Whitley Bay v Sunderland West End. Indeed I didn’t notice the time until 6.15, when the sun was back out and cracking the flags, three hours after the captains had shaken hands.

Ah; if only everything could be as uplifting and life-affirming as an afternoon at Tynemouth Cricket Club, or any cricket club in fact. Sadly, the real world just isn’t that nice, most of the time. Continuing with the greatest game, it’s surely more than symbolic that England were crushed and humiliated at Lords, skittled by Ireland for 85, on the day Boris Johnson was granted the power to set the controls for the heart of the sun. The only hope we have, sticking with metaphor rather than metonymy, is the recovery and renaissance to be found on day 3 when poor old Ireland were routed for 38. Goodness, this test left me conflicted; unlike football or rugby where I’ve always supported Ireland and wanted England to lose, regardless of opposition, cricket was more complex. On falling in love with cricket in 1973, there was no Ireland team I knew of to support, unlike in football when Miah Dennehy’s winner over Poland in October of that year defined me as an Ireland fan, in the same way that Mike Gibson’s incredible performance at Twickenham the year after decided where my international affiliations for the 15 man code would lie. Without the ties of ethnicity, it was the presence of Chris Balderstone, the Carlisle United captain, at Grace Road who made me opt for Leicestershire as my First Class County when Durham were still a Minor County, though I’ll admit to a sneaky flirtation with Middlesex when Phillippe Henri and Embers, the radical sporting equivalent of Rough Trade Records, were twirling their magic.

However, and this is important, in cricket it doesn’t matter who you follow, as long as you love the game; I’m more than happy to support England when they don’t play Ireland, as in cricket there isn’t the odious tribalism of football or economic triumphalism of rugby union. To be frank, Boris Johnson’s cabinet, that sordid, smug, duplicitous parcel of prorogues, embody the ethos of English rugby union to the fullest extent, while the shaven headed, chunky Italian knitwear clad, Carling swigging BNP/ EDL/ FLA/ DFLA /UKIP/Brexit Party authoritarian populists following Englun abroad are precisely the kind of expendable pond life who will provide the 20,000 extra Sturmabteilung recruits who’ll be cracking dissenting heads for Queen and country when the balloon really goes up. As ever, the ruling elite will rely on the willingness of reactionary lumpenproletariat to be their cannon fodder when the socially progressive, intellectual elements of society rise up against a whole lot more than the desperate effects of the no-deal Brexit this crazed fuckhead is obsessed with.

Meanwhile, have you followed the case of Carl Beech, aka “Nick,” the evil charlatan who inspired the wholly discredited Operation Midland? Without doubt he’s a vile individual; a paedophile, a fraudster and a habitual narcissistic liar with an inbuilt, sociopathic inability to accept he’s done wrong. I suppose that’s a couple of things he’s got in common with the new First Lord of the Treasury at least. Beechhas been sent down for 18 years, comprising 18 months for fraud, 18 months for possessing indecent images of children and 15 years for contempt of court. No, I haven’t got those sentences in the wrong order. The judicial system has decreed Beech’s most serious crime was defaming the elite, not abusing children. Beech appears to have a sexual perversion whereby he finds gratification from describing repugnant acts of torture being inflicted upon helpless young boys by powerful men. Pausing, as a victim of child sexual abuse myself, to say that Beech’s most immoral act in my eyes has been to waste police resources that could have been spent on helping actual victims, as well as potentially discouraging other victims from coming forward as the future environment surrounding the hideous taboo of paedophilic abuse may be less sympathetic to those who suffered unimaginable horrors.

The grotesque and repulsive accusations Beech made against Lord Bramall, Harvey Proctor, Leon Brittan and Edward Heath among others were almost too fantastical for words. The question that ought to have been asked before Beech’s obscene fantasies were described on television as “credible and true” by a senior officer from the Met, should have been; were these people sexual deviants of the utmost depravity, or were they unfairly maligned? Certainly, after a lengthy trial, it appears to be the latter, but if one looks at the people accused, namely the Head of the Army, Thatcher’s Home Secretary, a Tory Prime Minister and the Chair of the virulently racist Monday Club, we must conclude that these men may not have been sexually deviant, but their acts in public life were uniformly evil and deserve endless condemnation. Morally, they were all monstrous tyrants.

If we look at actual convictions for paedophilic acts, it becomes clear that the sexual abuse of young boys is unquestionably a class issue. Poorly paid, semi-literate, barely trained thugs in uniform, employed by in care homes, YOI units and, it has to be said, football clubs, are the patent for this kind of sex offender. Alpha males of limited intelligence, little education and an underprivileged, often chaotic, family background whose desire to dominate, subjugate and humiliate was not primarily a sexual one, but an expression of their lust for power and control over those they believed weaker than them, to mask their own inadequacies. From Barry Bennell to George Ormond and at every predator in a tracksuit in between, the stench of toxic masculinity exudes from every pore; these are the evil and inadequate men who will act as Johnson’s new security force, while those in government continue to view the working class as cannon fodder for their sordid beliefs in a new world order.

Make no mistake about it; the new cabinet is the most squalid, evil, rapacious collection of neo-Fascist bastards that have ever taken power in this country. This will no doubt get worse when Farage and Yaxley-Lennon inevitably get noseholds at the trough, whether they're inside or outside the Palace of Westminster won’t matter a fuck. The Commons are being dismissed come September; not for an election, but for the Dishonourable Member for Uxbridge’s take on realpolitik.  He’ll shut the place down to ensure no-deal Brexit happens and continue to rule by decree. Within 18 months, we will see the death penalty reintroduced, modern day workhouses filled with all economically inactive citizens until 50, making all the goods we can’t afford now the EU have washed their hands of us and, without a shadow of a doubt, internment camps for those seen as behaving or holding beliefs contrary to “the best interests of the nation.” We’re talking repatriation or slavery, heterosexual behaviour or chemical castration, adherence to a national ethos or forced re-education. Yes it is Big Brother come back to life. Yes it is Nazi eugenics in another name. Yes, it is the Khmer Rouge marching all those who dare to think to the Killing Fields. Johnson is neither a clown nor a buffoon; he is an evil dictator, ready to call Year Zero the day we leave the EU.