As life returns to near normal there’s one business I’d love to see in recession.
The grievance industry has flourished during lockdown.
A plethora of practitioners many drawing their living from the public purse, have poisoned the public well with manufactured malevolence and hypocrisy.
Self serving duplicity has always been a feature of public life but it’s thrived during this dark period.
Many of these pontificators have rightly condemned the scourge of racism in football.
Yet they’ve ignored the fate of 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, who are reported to have died in appalling conditions while building the new stadia in Qatar for next year’s World Cup.
Boris Johnson’s climate spokeswoman Allegra Stratton blithely admits she’ll continue to help pollute the planet by driving her diesel car instead of switching to electric.
In fairness it’s not that long ago we were being told diesel cars were environmentally friendly.
Proof perhaps that some politicians can sway whichever way the wind is blowing on any given day.
Increasingly worryingly have been the attacks on the principle of due process when accusations should be dealt with through proper investigation.
Social media – where grievance thrives
Social media has permitted grievance mongers and get-even merchants who make their living through public funds to flourish like piranha in a goldfish bowl.
In behaviour reminiscent of the Salem witch trials we see some of them sharing video clips which reveal only partial stories.
Others impart half truths and tell tall tales to attack opponents and individuals who for various reasons are unable to publicly defend themselves.
As the old adage says, ‘A lie is halfway round the world by the time truth has its boots on’.
Today that means reputations, careers and livelihoods being trashed in trial by Twitter by the mischievous and mendacious.
This approach to life crosses the political spectrum, but I’m disappointed to see it taking root among those who claim to want a fairer and more equal society – and particularly among those who claim to some degree or other to be left leaning.
Admittedly being on the left means very little nowadays given the confusion as to what it now actually stands for following its infiltration by identity politicians.
Progressive left looks more regressive
At one time it involved the pursuit of social and economic advancement for the working class, but increasingly what masquerades as the progressive left isn’t interested in that.
They may label themselves progressive but they look increasingly regressive.
Many of them have become shakedown merchants who have boarded the culture wars gravy train of government handouts and sinecures.
This makes it very much in their economic interests to manufacture and foment dissent whether justified or not.
Interesting piece https://t.co/DkrBJu93On
— Jim Spence (@JimSpenceDundee) July 29, 2021
They have little in common with the old labouring classes whom they appear to openly despise.
To me they appear to be a new kind of Tory Toff class which has jettisoned old style solidarity for the much more lucrative industry of identity politics.
The world view of everyday oppression they fabricate is at odds with the experiences of many normal folk, yet they feverishly conspire to construct artificial division – and keep the cash rolling in.
Grievance as a growth industry
A thriving growth industry has emerged in gender, race sexuality, sovereignty, and every other area where foaming discontent can be manipulated to keep warring tribes at each other’s throats – and keep those who stir the pot in their comfortably subsidised lifestyles.
Government grants and handouts to talent-free agitators, spin doctors, special advisers, cap doffing activists and tame special interest groups make up a burgeoning business.
They are a collective of non commercial enterprises which needn’t sully their hands making profits but instead flourish by sponging off the rest of society, while millions of real workers face economic austerity.
Community activists and malcontents must constantly assure us that we’re all patriarchs, racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, or any other kind of ist or phobe that they can invent
There’s a very real culture war going on and it’s being fought between the grafters and these grifters.
To ensure their handsome grants, subsidies, salaries, and perks, a variety of community activists and malcontents must constantly assure us that we’re all patriarchs, racists, sexists, homophobes, transphobes, or any other kind of ist or phobe that they can invent in their many spare moments.
That might mean peddling the line that biology is an artificial construct, carelessly and dangerously using race to foment and foster division or seeking to divide on the basis of supposedly superior nationalism.
Left unchecked their twisted views will ensure that division grows and multiplies, but then that’s very good business for them.
Those whose talents could be poured into a thimble are nurturing a golden goose allowing them to virtue signal while ensuring personal enrichment and advancement.
For them, a grievance culture of war-war is much more profitable than jaw-jaw to paraphrase Churchill.
But just as the savvy Dundee voters chased Winston out of the city and replaced him with the Prohibitionist Neddy Scrymgeour, it’s time for sober judgement on these charlatans.
It’s time to call last orders on their gravy train and shunt it permanently into the sidings.