It’s as clear as urinating in snow, as they say in this neck of the woods. The era of playing by the rules ended when contradicting parents, ignoring teachers and disrespecting coppers became the norm.
The world segwayed seamlessly into two distinct societies, the conformers and the rebels; all in the cause of money and power.
But what’s to be done about sports dopers, automotive cheats and common or garden anarchists?
Well, years ago DK sanctioned a district in Copenhagen where the rules don’t apply. It’s Christiania. Of course its freedoms are abused but it satisfies some primeval antisocial urges.
So here’s the thing: sport is easy. Just run two systems, the clean and the ‘open’. Similar to the old gents v. players, amateurs v. pros.
For cars, establish two classes, conforming and others, differentiated by eye-watering tax rates.
All non-conformists would have to choose publicly not to conform but accept the consequences of their choice. Importantly no stigma would attach to it.
It can’t work, you say. No? Well the present set up is a train crash so what’s not to like?
Boadicea's Chariot 
Danes are generally followers and conformists. Sweden has been compared to North Korea due to its militant uniformity. Some have even warned that should the situation in Sweden spiral out of control, which it now appears is the case, fascism could easily take hold as a large portion of the population are already at that point! All it would take is for that to me seen as comparatively respectable. I prefer my beloved West Country — much nicer!
Money is the root of all evil.
OZ
BewareC! It attracts many undesirables.
Not quite, OZ. The love of money is the root of all evil.
Well it would be quite easy to clear things up a bit, mandatory ten year jail sentences for a start in hard labour camps. Don’t just incarcerate the peasants make sure all directors of a malefactoring company get it automatically. That would concentrate their minds!
Cancel all professional sport, end of. Amateur only with no recompense. What a relief that would be! Put them all out of business in one fell swoop and then they could all go and get a real job.
Set up stocks for minor malefactors, adulterers, police minor infringements etc etc , the fear of public humiliation would act as a great diminisher of the attraction of the original sin.
There is a great deal of difference between non confirmation in your professional capacity where it can do great harm to others and non conforming in your own private life that does not infringe on anything except yourself. The difference has to be made. Most of the above are for a pecuniary advantage and I agree with OZ and FEEG, remove the money and a lot of it would fade away without legislation or any need for anyone to do anything!
One thing that does not help society is this acceptance these days of breeding progeny of dubious value without benefit of matrimony. personally I would make matrimony a condition to receive any benefits at al for children, housing etc etc.
The whole thing is slack Alice all round and contributes to the sliding of society inexorably into a morass. It will end up with having to have a war to get it back on track or some horrible plague or dystopian nightmare. We will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Christopher you are quite wrong about the West Country. My sister lives in Barnstaple and my brother farms in Ottery St Mary. Both are hot beds of genteel quiet fascism, mostly full of escapees from up country communities over-run with wogs. Most would deport the lot of them out of hand and wouldn’t be too gentle about it either. But the last thing they are going to do is talk to a foreigner about it, especially one who sounds German.. UKIP did surprisingly well in some of those ‘well bred’ communities last time round!
Oh dear! There are no nice places left in the world, then! By most accounts people in the Nordic countries remain largely genteel but they’d largely be happy to toss out most immigrants given the opportunity. Germany isn’t far behind, but Germans are largely incapable of being genteel.
I darkly suspect that the vast majority of NW Europeans all feel the same, merely good manners precludes them from rabid verbal comments before strangers. Which is why one always tends to hear the unvarnished truth in neighbourhood pubs!
They would start with the rag heads, move onto the wogs and finish up with the banditry of the Balkans! Out with the lot of them and make the feckless parasitic whites take the vacated jobs or starve. seems to be the general opinion all round the UK. I got into a liquid afternoon in Bideford with a bunch of complete strangers and it was quite extraordinary how quickly they got down to such conversation with a willing fellow traveler. Of course they wanted the American story too for comparison purposes. I obliged.
CO: good manners conceal many things, but the “situation” is growing increasingly strained. I found it telling that Margot Wallström of all people warned that Sweden is on the verge of social collapse. Swedes are not known for being a hyperbolic lot. In general I’ve found that people are fairly accepting of immigrants from similar cultural backgrounds who communicate in the native lingo effectively and do not make a point of standing out. I never had difficulties with Britons or the Nordics. Then again, I keep to myself and quickly make myself useful. The Chinese are astounded by the sheer stupidity and mendacity of European governments. This will all end in tears.
I say let them take drugs. Sport, professional or otherwise is never a level playing field if you will excuse the pun. The training facilities offered to the US Olympic team are vastly superior to those of most other countries in the world. Everything from diets, training equipment, instruction, financial support etc. means that wealthier countries who put an emphasis on sport are going to win more often than their poorer counterparts. From a spectator’s perspective, it is a competition between the wealthiest not one between the best or most talented. Drugs are just one way of improving performance and if athletes want to use them, let them do so. It is their bodies that are being abused, and if it is a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body and the foetus therein, it should be an athlete’s right to do what he likes with his.
I wonder what would be possible if all modern technology and drugs were used to create a new 100m record.
Special bionic knees, hips and arms, steroids, etc. I wonder if we could break 9s.
In my mind Janus’s blog has not been given enough regard, but discussion trickled down to trying to judge different stand-points on racism in different countries, seems to be a pet subject of yours. On the other hand the money and power greed and the sports have been commented in great detail. What I am rather thinking is, that the segregation into conformists and rebels is rather flawed in the first instance, what about some real good minority, who acts on non-personal interest? I see the whole situation not as black and white, there is a lot of ‘grey’ within and the grey hopefully converts back into white and we are all happy after all. This certainly suits my mindset better than anything. It is up to the intelligencia to unite and not tolerate non-accountable politicians, bankers and company CEO’s any longer. But regarding unity, that is the first problem of all, each country and interest group want to do their own thing and does not want to accept opinions formulated by some-one else or somewhere else. In that respect Mr.Putin is right, Europe as a whole sometimes comes across like a children garden, when looked at it from outside in an objective way.
FOE, I think the grey-shaded masses tend to be apathetic, having neither the moral fibre to object or the criminal urge to join in. In politics the ‘don’t know/don’t care’ majority are a dangerous breed.
Janus, you are absolutely right, but I didn’t mean these, but the reverse. In my mind there are FOUR different character profiles in humans, but I am not ready yet to have fully defined them. THough you are right the grey is a bit flaky, it might be RED GREEN YELLOW and BLUE humans. Thanks
I wonder if people have become apathetic in Europe because they don’t get to chose for themselves, seemingly anything very much these days. Too much comes down as dictat from Brussels, none of the unelected officials or the elected ones come to that seem to be accountable to any electorate!
Try getting rid of an MP, virtually impossible.
Interesting that where there are local plebiscites on all and everything, eg. Switzerland and the USA, there is far more interest and engagement.
Sod the intelligentsia it is the ordinary tax paying citizens who need to complain, but there is no mechanism to do so. Irate letters to the MP, PM and the Times go unanswered or have anodyne mechanical replies. Short of rioting in the streets extensively and stringing a few up from lamposts what is one supposed to do?
What most of us do, who can afford to, is just what we have all done,-a runner! To places we find more convenable less full of yobs and officious thought police.
Interesting to note that both Switzerland and the USA are full of privately held guns! Acts as a great check on all would be authority.
C, that’s a scary picture you’re painting. Local militias. Isn’t it just like the Middle East?
I rather thought that Switzerland has run on local militias for the last ‘n’ hundred years? Resulting in the quietest most boring place on earth?
They seem to manage it just fine, but then they are a damned sight more careful who they let in in the first place and every one does national service.
I think most of the USA works too because cities here, (ie everything above a hamlet is a city) pretty well run their own affairs, they appear to have far more autonomy than in the UK anyway. So consensus tends to keep things fairly peaceful.
Where the trouble is in the USA is where cities are large with multi ethnic populations, riots ensue pretty regularly. Where there is homogeneity of population it just doesn’t happen, No riots in Boise Idaho and the likes are there?
I just don’t think the races live together too well, different expectations, life styles, religions, none of it jives for all the wishful thinking of the left. (Who never live there!).
PS the USA managed to have a very successful war of Independence with only militia against the British regulars. Not all militia are like the bloody ragheads.
😃
Isn’t it the duty of politicians to prevent homogenity of populations, as this might lead to more civil unrest?
CO-I agree historically for the USA having had a war of independence created a common mindset and a certain level of patriotism, that a German especially can only dream of. Nevertheless Switzerland and the USA cannot be compared with the rest of Europe due to being little in the case of Switzerland and far away from where terror is, therefore a union with common policies should help to strengthen each other and yes perhaps commonly organised plebiscites and strikes against MP’s acting in an unfair way might help to get rid of some frustrations amongst the population, which is not as privileged as us to be able to choose where to live.
Well the UK could certainly do with some democracy for a start. Talk about a dictatorship, you can’t fart without being arrested for something, can’t bash your children without social services landing on the doorstep. Can’t park anywhere without highway bloody robbery charges. Can’t defend yourself with pepper spray, tasers, guns or knives without you being the guilty party! Rule by ukase from bloody Brussels. No wonder everyone seems to want to leave! I note a lot more of my friends want to leave than used to.
Every time I return there seems to be more rules and regulation from the petty jobsworths for the law abiding whilst the young run feral and attack all and sundry at will without due consequence.
I have a new one at the moment, selling my flat in Brum, have to send proof of identity. So I sent them copies of my passport and driving license, both have photos. Oh no that wasn’t good enough, they want them to be certified, seeing they saw me and know that is me, I told them I had no intention of going any further and that I was not a money laundering spic drug baron, yet!
Then they wanted a bill with my name and address on it. Don’t be ridiculous said I, pay my own bills? Certainly not! That is up to my husband to pay my bills of course my name isn’t on them, you must be joking! They were seemingly nonplussed at that one and left it at that hastily.
All I want is to sell a very modest little flat hardly the possession of any one up to nefarious practices!
Too much invasion of privacy by half, the bloody government need to butt out of peoples lives.
CO: the Yanks relied on the French especially. They would not have made it on their own. One reason why Benedict Arnold chose to support the legitimate government was that he feared that France had designs on the colonies and knew that, whatever faults the British had, they were still far better than the French! The Dutch and Spanish also helped the US a bit and, almost unheard of in the festering hovel south of Canada, Catherine the Great led a coalition that distracted British attention and resources in order to help the revolting colonials. Note that, Yanks, you owe your ability to wreck the world to the Frogs and the Russians! At the moment more and more people want to leave the place they live because the entire bloody world’s going tits up. I know many Yanks who’d like to simply leave — for the first time the USA is becoming a source of emigrants. I’ve received a few marriage proposals from women and men desperate to leave the RMS Obamatanic. In China one bloke asked me what his chances were of finding a job in Germany. I told him “slim”:, he’s educated, hard-working and unlikely to ever cause problems. Worse of all, he’s not a Muslim — that really ruins his chances with the Huns. Not that it would help him with the Obamatanic — Iraqi Christians are deported and every Muslim gets an Obama phone, free health insurance and a council house!
Come on, guys – cheer up! I’m losing the will to blog here! 🙂
Janus is losing the will to blog
While I’m in Spain in a thick fog
Cheer up old chap, it’s all okay
Let them moan and come what may.
🙂
Backside says he’ll still do his thing, wha’ever! 😎