Utopia, you are standing in it!

Partial reblog as Brendan O’Neill at Spiked Online gets stuck into the enviro-mentalists.

It actually makes sense that Ms Thunberg – a wildly celebrated 16-year-old Swede who founded the climate-strike movement for schoolkids – should sound cultish. Because climate-change alarmism is becoming ever stranger, borderline religious, obsessed with doomsday prophecies. Consider Extinction Rebellion, the latest manifestation of the upper-middle classes’ contempt for industrialisation and progress. It is at times indistinguishable from old fundamentalist movements that warned mankind of the coming End of Days. I followed Extinction Rebellion from Parliament Square to Marble Arch yesterday and what I witnessed was a public display of millenarian fear and bourgeois depression. People did dances of death and waved placards warning of the heat-death of the planet. It felt deeply unnerving.

There was an interesting new poll out the other day on public attitudes to marijuana and the possibility of law reform (on which there is to be a referendum at the time of next year’s election).  The results certainly took me by surprise.

For the record, I don’t have very strong views on the law around marijuana.  A couple of years ago I’d got to the point where I’d probably have voted for full liberalisation, but since then I’ve swung back somewhat in the other direction (influenced in part by reviews of and extracts from this recent book, a copy of which I’m expecting in the mail any day now).  In an up/down vote today I’d probably vote against full liberalisation, but as to how I will actually vote next year, a lot might depend on the specific question.  One thing I really don’t like is a law on…

Mary was born on December 8, 1542 at Linlithgow Palace, Scotland, to King James V of Scots and his French second wife, Marie de Guise. Mary was said to have been born prematurely and was the only legitimate child of James V to survive him She was the great-niece of King Henry VIII of England, as her paternal grandmother, Margaret Tudor, was Henry VIII’s sister. On December 14, 1542 six days after her birth, she became Queen of Scotland when her father died from drinking contaminated water while on campaign following the Battle of Solway Moss.

Mary I, Queen of Scots

Since Mary was an infant when she inherited the throne, Scotland was ruled by regents until she became an adult. From the outset, there were two claims to the regency: one from Catholic Cardinal Beaton, and the other from the Protestant Earl of Arran, who was next in line…

Both my grandfathers fought in the Great War, one in the Middle East and one in France. They survived (or I wouldn’t be here), but one was badly wounded in a gas attack. I’ve thought about this on Anzac Day for most of my 60+ years, but last year I learned something I hadn’t thought about and, as far as I can tell, hardly anyone else in Australia knows. We were only fighting Turkey because the British government refused their request for an alliance. I wrote about this last year, and I’m reposting it now.

Despite the massive evidence, the anti-vaccination movement is gaining strength. Scientists are concerned measles could return even though it was eliminated in the U.S. 20 years ago. Note the footage of politician and environmentalist Joseph Kennedy included in the video. It isn’t paranoia when environmentalists really are trying to kill you.

Unless policy-makers act immediately, the planet will cease to be able to support human life in twelve years, three months and seven days … this event will happen on a Tuesday … after lunch.

No, that is not a skit from Monty Python but an approximation made by the latest virtue signalling publicity craze, Extinction Rebellion. This motley crew of eco-rednecks was founded in October, 2018 and quickly created a loose network from eco-conscious hippies to students on Easter break to antagonised aging Marxists. Together they have managed to show how social networks can be utilised to control an agenda with stunts that require limited funding, planning or intellectual coherence. The media, during a slow news cycle, are lapping up these attention whores who use the microphone and a myriad of intertwined social media accounts as acts of virtue signalling liberation.

There is one nagging question that won’t go away: Was…