Values or no values?

Weasel Words

1.    “Values”

Farage. Mark Thomas has reinvented Farage as a noun. The “farage” is that dirty brown liquid you find in the bottom of your wheelie bin during dry-ish weather when the leachate from the vegetable matter you throw away has a real chance to ferment into a nasty, thickish slurry-bilge.

According to Farage, and therefore UKIP, we’re (actually I need to watch my P’s and Q’s a bit more on account of the popularity UKIP is attaining) you’re a Judeo – Christian nation, and us imports paying for bleeding the welfare state dry and running ruining the NHS, and, well, generally going about our root of all evil lifestyles need to understand, respect, and kow-tow to those Judeo – Christian values.

Someone’s values, actually, underpin what any given person is about, I think. For the weasels, however, values are what they want to impose on others. Their own, real, manufactured or imaginary values being, obviously (to them) better by far than anyone else’s.

Those Judeo – Christian ‘values’ were the foundation of the crusades, of the inquisition, of slavery, of racism. The imposition of those values…well, Nigel, how do you think it’s turned out? I’m not the one with the History degree. I’m the one who thinks regarding history as bunk has more than a degree of common sense as a reasonable starting point.

Politicians have values the way actors have characters, make-up and costumes: to suit.

As an illustration, take meat and those UK values. Here we go:

·         Factory farming, ill-treating, killing and eating the following is absolutely fine, according to our your ‘values’: chickens, ducks, cows, sheep, pigs, fish, other stuff, but definitely not swans.

·         Unless you’re a royal or a guest of the royals, whereupon suddenly (tugs forelock) it is absolutely okay to eat swanflesh (what century are we you in again?).

·         Eating dogs, horses, cats, most insects and other people, however, is a vile aberration and anyone with values that contradict yours should be reviled and mocked and treated with distain.

·         It is utterly wrong to cut the fin from a shark and throw the rest away.

·         It is absolutely fine to buy only the breast of a chicken, because, well, who can be bothered with all those bones and things. Make stock? My Judeo – Christian god didn’t invent those little cubes for nothing you know.

·         Frog’s legs? Let’s mock the French for those.

·         Sweetbreads? Kidneys? Liver? Don’t be daft, only oddballs eat offal.

There’s just a small sample of those fine, upstanding, worthy of imposition on others “values” right there, Nigel. You can’t stick ‘values’ in front any old garbage and dignify it. See “community” in the 80’s / 90’s for the proof that that approach is rubbish.

Some folk have values, live by them, and let others get on with their lives and their different values. That approach, in itself, is a value those people have.

Nigel and his like wouldn’t recognise a value if it morphed into a piano and landed on their head.