The Not Born Yesterday cultural meltdown files

The Yesterday files arcive

Over the years, nby has had a number of obsessions. A representative list is offered below with links, but I thought it'd be useful to explain why I've chosen to archive these particular ones. The answer, in a nutshell, is that they show important aspects of a civilised culture sinking into the quicksand of relativism.

The Gordon Brown collection demonstrates lies, self-delusion, the vicious retaliation of the real Estabishment, and a person's insatiable thirst for power getting in the way of good government. They cover nby's moment of greatest infamy - although the eyesight allegations have all been entirely vindicated by subsequent events. We will (I suspect) never know if Brown really was taking MAOI anti-depressants, but in a way this has become immaterial: the fascinating thing about ths episode was how it highlighted that nobody believed anything put out of Number Ten's publicity machine any more. As an audience member remarked on Question Time after Andrew Marr popped the pill question, "This is a spin-driven, empty movement being hoist by its own patade of innuendo". At the time, I resented the suggestion that my Story was based on innuendo - but with the benefit of hindsight, it matters not a jot.

The Plymouth files record aspects of a City where - to say the least of it - a small clique of ambitious people with scant regard for the citizen are dipping into a tiny gene pool of 'talent'. Plymouth represents for me a classic First Decade local government case history: doubts, clouds, rumour, unexplained behaviour - and above all, people with at best equivocal motives.

Some of my favourite stuff is in the Gold files, chiefly because I enjoy looking for nuggets and insights in research - and greatly prefer the damning fact to the blase assertion. To be egotistical, it is also a pride thing, because every expert laughed at the analysis of why the gold price was (and is) doing unnatural things: but in the end nby was shown to have assembled the facts into a more cogent argument than anyone else. When China stunned the world in 2009 by announcing a trebling of its gold reserves (as if that fact might be the daily weather forecast) I received an email from a commodities trader. It said 'I thought you were a nutter, but this must feel like your ultimate moment of triumph'.

The Police files show how one of the key pillars of society can develop obvious structural cracks, but nine out of ten citizens will be 'too busy' to notice. The police force in Britain today is driven by careerist toadies drivelling on about diversity and homophobic hate-crime, but neglecting the terrible spread of wanton burglary, vandalism and electronic fraud that truly affects the 'average' citizen. I include the files in this collection because they help us focus on how a body of officers primarily there to enforce law and order has not lost the plot, but rather dumped it in favour of one offering more power to its elbow - and an easier life.

The Harman files are central to what Not Born Yesterday is on about. Although some readers will find this parallel extreme, Harriet Harman's ideas about gender and its role in society are as cod, bigoted and dangerous as those of Hitler about Jewishness. Thankfully, her views have little or no appeal outside the insane asylum that has been the PLP for some three decades now. But the files should be required reading for anyone who wonders how and why delusional compulsive disorder can get within an ace of ultimate power - and sometimes achieve it.

I have left the best and worst until last. The Care System files encapsulate what is fundamentally wrong with Cruel Britannia: Establishment denial, a misguided acceptance of perversion, secrecy, abusive intrusion by the State into family affairs - and a shameful inequality before the Law. The appalling case histories here (and elsewhere on a daily basis in the media) finally nail why pernicious pc will always come back to bite humanity. The ludicrous tolerance political correctness dictates will always offer infinite opportunities for exploitation. Disturbed people will exploit everyone from naive Ministers to defenceless children, but this reality seems to elude our leaders. The selection I've chosen also (I hope) shows how the genuinely well-meaning desire for a rainbow of diversity can so easily destroy decency if it has no sense of proportion. I can do no better than quote the German historians Manvell & Fraenkel, who wrote of the Weimer Republic subverted by the Nazis, 'An overly broad grant of political freedom eventually snuffed out all personal liberty'.

The Editor December 2009

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The Gordon Brown Files

The Prediction

The Exclusive

Round Two -more symptoms

Round Three - the main media hesitate

The unconvincing denial

The story seems to die. Post-mortem without a body

Marr pops the pill question

First there were no tears and then there were two

The leadership lies continue: nby lodges slander complaint with the BBC