Twits: Bevanite

I'm bored with the smoking ban, election manifesto promises, even the Grand National. Other blogsters are dealing with them well.

I Twit, therefore I am a Twat. I see various Tweets, some of which amuse me, some of which are propaganda, most of which are unresearched Twaddle - so unresearched, sometimes, that I just wonder how successfully the brainwashing process has worked.

Tory Tweeters, beware, you are not safe either. But Labour Drones are a breed apart, so I will start with one.

I'm not saying who. Both of my regular readers, and Twittees, know that I am not terribly biased, save for against stupidity. Any indications that I am against the Labour movement are mere revelations of my detestation of certain of the establishment because of their self-satisfied smugness, not the ideals which they have chosen to follow.

Anyway, the target of my ad hominem attack today is a follower of one Aneurin Bevan's "teachings" or, more accurately, ideals. He or she is far too young to remember Nye (as he was affectionately called), as am I, although I was at least around when he died.

Nye Bevan was pretty thick, as are most of the politicians in the Labour cabinet today. Broadly speaking, the ones who aren't thick are lawyers.

Nye was born, and lived, in The Valleys. The Valleys are a pretty part of the UK but the economy there was pretty much based on digging black rocks out of the ground and burning them to generate the new-fangled electricity needed to make everything work. As such, there was work there, for ever and a day. Except that there soon became better, cheaper and cleaner ways of making the electricity and the black rock wouldn't last for ever. The way out of the Valleys was never to dig harder or longer. The way out was to become something else, in the same way as a postman (for instance) could. And the easiest, most direct route, was (and still is) via the unions, so Nye joined and worked his way up the ranks. As there was little competition, this was a speedy process. After a bit of kerfuffle involving incitement of the workers to revolt, Nye went to the Labour College in London, where he was duly brainwashed with the Marx manifesto, as they all were, and still are. He then returned to the Valleys where he was instrumental in starting the General Strike. From there he moved on to Party Politics, where he was a pain in the arse even by Labour standards, and subsequently proposed, and implemented, the National Health Service which was a Good Thing In Principle.

Good for him, I say. Needed doing. Shame it was done in the way it was, whereby the government took it over and messed it up, as they tend to do with anything they take over. I wonder what Nye would have thought had he received one of those propaganda leaflets on his 62nd birthday, saying that he could "see someone" in the next two weeks to help him with his cancer (from which he died shortly afterwards)?

The major problem with the Welfare State is that it could never have been implemented in the way in which it was, without removing responsibility of individuals for their own welfare. Nothing that has ever been taken over by government, ever, in any country, has worked. A government should be aware of this but, of course, each successive one knows better than the last.

The Drone to whom I refer today is sadly deluded, as was Nye. The only real difference between the two is that Nye was well-known within his own Party for being a dissident, not toeing the line - he often said things contrary to the Official Party Line, resulting in his suspension more than once.

I read the drone's blog once, but after a few sentences, one of which began with "I was sat", following which an apostrophe appeared as incongruously as a rabbit from a hat, I gave up. English being my natural language, I maintain that a prerequisite for a "good read" is that the author knows the difference between a tense and a participle, and the difference between a grocers and a grocer's. And indeed a grocers'.

But, Drone, I admire your commitment. Read more. Take off those blinkers, research a bit of history. I'm not naturally a follower of anyone, but I know which way lies success, and failure.

And get an editor. I hope you do well.