Tag: Good Guys

It’s Not Hyperbole

Food & Drink, Marketing / Advertising, Patriotism, Trades

When I first referred to Jeremy Clarkson as “The Greatest Living Englishman”, it started off as a nod to his unflinching honesty when it came to everything he looked at, such as his (non-)review of some Vauxhall car model back in the 1990s:  “If they’re not going to bother to make an interesting car, I’m not going to bother to review it.”

That caused Big Business (in this case, Vauxhall’s then-parent company General Motors) to go apeshit, because that’s not the way car reviewers are supposed to behave.

It’s that same unflinching honesty that he displayed in his first bumbling efforts at farming which turned his Clarkson’s Farm TV show into a runaway smash hit, and along the way almost single-handedly changed the way the British regard both food and the farmers who produce it.

So when he turned that same agricultural ignorance towards brewing beer — simply because he had a barn full of unsold barley which he needed to sell — one might think that it was just another celebrity using their name to sell a product.

In this case, one would be not only wrong, but spectacularly wrong.  And if you want to see a case study in marketing that, in hindsight, never had a chance of failing, then I implore you to watch this video.

Time and time again, “the experts” believed that Clarkson was making a mistake, and every single time he proved them not only wrong, but spectacularly wrong.

He turned a few thousand pounds’ worth of unsold barley into a £75 million company, and in the process, changed the way British people think about farming, about beer and about the people who farm and the people who brew beer.

And he did it all with his usual unflinching honesty and openness, which gave the lie to the usual corporate veneer of respectability and care for both their employees and their customers.

Which is why he truly is the Greatest Living Englishman.

I can’t wait to try it the next time I go over to Britishland.

A Question Of Time

Conservatism, Lifestyle, Traditions

Longtime Reader preussenotto writes:

Thanks for maintaining the last interesting thing on the internet.

You are probably 20 years older than I am give or take, but I have a question for you.

We hear a lot of nonsense now about “Someone born in the wrong body” but do you ever feel like you were born in the wrong time? That your preferences, tastes, attitudes always seem about 40 years out of step with what is happening now?

It isn’t just a “getting old” thing, I always felt it even when I was a callow yoot. I would read about Victorian England, or Coolidge America, and think… I would fit perfectly into that time, where in the hell did it go? Keep in mind I have no desire to live without electricity, or painless dentistry, but I always mentally fit better into a bygone (often imagined, I grant you) era, and it has never gone away, fifty plus years on. Dunno if there are others of my ilk out there.

Maybe its just inevitable nostalgia, or “O Tempora, O Mores”?

 Let me address the primary issue up front.

When presussenotto writes:  “Keep in mind I have no desire to live without electricity, or painless dentistry…”

Whenever I talk about preferring to live in another time, some smartass always comes up with “So you want to live in a time before [penicillin, automatic transmissions, antibiotics, take your pick]?”  Of course I don’t, and neither does preussenotto.

When we think of earlier times, we speak of the culture of the time, the mood of the time, the manners of the time and the social constructs that were in place then, but are not now.

Using cars as an example of the technology, for instance:  I like having the excellent brakes, better wiring, better suspension and such of today;  what I don’t like is stupid shit like On*Star, nanny warnings about seatbelts, electronic rather than mechanical handbrakes and all those things that have supposedly improved the driving experience but have really served only to drive the price of cars upwards, for little real or lasting benefit.

What we are talking about is a time when you could leave your car unlocked in the parking lot at the supermarket, or your house unlocked during the day, or talk to people without worrying about triggering their ultra-sensitive emotional antennae, or visit decent public libraries with thousands of worthwhile books to take out.

When politicians didn’t try to “improve” or “safeguard” your life, and didn’t take over a third of your salary in taxes.

When the next generation would come along with at least a decent chance of living a better life than their parents.

When capitalism was the way to a better future, and Communism was actually illegal or at least frowned upon.

When you could work at a company for a long time, maybe for life, and wouldn’t be fired just because some accountant thought he could find someone else who could do the same job for less, with fewer benefits.

When your kid could take his air rifle or .22 to school and just leave it in his locker so he could go shooting in the woods with his buddies, unsupervised, at the end of the school day.

When raising a family was seen as the primary duty of a married couple, with the man earning the salary and the woman staying at home to look after the kids and the household — and she wasn’t forced into the workplace because even a modest house had suddenly become unaffordable on only one salary.

When a family outing was a picnic in the park, and not a trip to Disneyland that costs thousands of dollars.

When girls showed modesty in their attitude, their behavior and their clothing, and boys embraced their masculinity while understanding the duties of citizenship and responsibility.

When people could still be shocked by bad language in public.

To return to the question:  “Do you ever feel like you were born in the wrong time? That your preferences, tastes, attitudes always seem about 40 years out of step with what is happening now?”

I feel that way every single day.  And it’s not just nostalgia, where your memory saves only the good parts and never the bad parts.  The fact of the matter is that I do remember the bad parts, but in almost every case the good parts back then were far better than the best of times now — and the bad parts back then were not even close to the horrors of everyday life today.

I try to live my life today as close as I can to the way people lived their lives a long time ago — and at every turn I’m laughed at, patronized and dismissed as just some old fart living in the past.

Well, guess what?  I want to live in the past.  I don’t care which time, particularly:  it could even be a mixture of some parts of the 1910s all the way to the early 1960s.  I wasn’t alive back before 1954, but even without having lived back then, I feel far closer to those earlier decades than I do to the bloody shambles of our so-called “civilization” of today.  The people of, say, 1960 lived lives with a philosophy far closer to the civilization of 1900 than the people of today do compared to the people of 1965.

When I say despairingly, as I often do, that I don’t want to live in this world anymore, I’m not being suicidal:  I just feel so damn hopeless. because everything that was once so wonderful has disappeared completely, leaving no joy behind.

And so does Reader preussenotto, and so, I suspect, do many of my Readers.

The tempora  have changed, and not for the better;  and the mores  have disappeared completely.

Update:  Here’s what I mean:

And here’s the thing:  I know that not all men today dress like the the loon on the RHS, and that some men still dress today like the one on the LHS.

However, back in 1950, not a single man dressed like the RHS twerp.

Now ask me the question again…

Lessons Learned

Immigration, Politics

For the longest time, I would have been one of the loudest voices opposing the idea that we Murkins should copy anything much from the Scandi countries — okay, maybe some of their darkest noir crime TV shows, but not much else.

However, I think that when it comes to immigration policy, there’s much to be learned from the Danes.  Watch the video to see how they fixed their erstwhile ruinous position on immigration.

What interests me the most is that highly-restrictive immigration controls, so often a feature of conservative (what they call right-wing) parties, have become very much a part of the Social Democrat (what we would call left-wing) party policy.

You see, the Danes are if nothing else, highly pragmatic in their pursuit of what they consider the ideal society.  And yes, while a strong welfare state is the sine qua non  of Danish society, they also understand that without social cohesion, a welfare state is not a tenable system.  Those two pillars — the welfare system and social cohesion — form the foundation of their society, and what the Danes realized, long before any of their European neighbors did, that untrammeled immigration of Third Worlders of the Arab Muslim and African persuasion was rending their social cohesion asunder, and undermining their cherished welfare state.

You have to hand it to them for swinging their immigration system by 180 degrees:  in fact, it’s harder to immigrate into Denmark than it is into the United States because the Danish requirements for residency are unbelievably restrictive, including such concepts as civic indoctrination and the linking of conformity to any kind of welfare.  If you don’t fit in, the Danes will force you to fuck off back to your shithole country of origin, with neither remorse nor pity on their part.

And naturalized Danish citizenship is almost impossible to come by without lengthy permanent residency and complete assimilation via a rigorous civics examination process.  (Fail that test, and you’re on the next plane back to Shitholistan.)

I would really, really like to see that happen Over Here.

I’ll leave it to y’all to decide, though, how likely it is that the foul Democrat-Socialist Party of today would perform a similar change in their position on immigration.  And quit laughing.

We need more attitude like this:

“If you don’t share our values, contribute to our economy, and assimilate into our society, then we don’t want you in our country.”

No, that wasn’t the Danish PM.  That was President Donald J. Trump, December 2025.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

I know that Righteous Shootings, almost by definition, include the term “needed killing” somewhere in the preamble.  But here’s an excellent example of taking out someone who’s just breathing oxygen unnecessarily:

A Vietnam War veteran managed to fend off a deranged, naked intruder who broke into a woman’s California home on Friday morning.

The elderly vet was thrown to the ground by the maniac, fracturing both of his legs before he opened fire and fatally shot the intruder.

Police say the nude suspect had been wandering the neighborhood moments earlier, shouting incoherently and attempting to break into several homes.

LAPD Capt. Warner Castillo told reporters that the suspect eventually forced his way into a residence where a woman and two other people were inside, including the 79-year-old veteran, identified by neighbors only as George.

‘The 79-year-old man tells the suspect to leave, tells him I have a gun and I will shoot you. The suspect grabs the man, lifts him, throws him on the ground, and that’s where the man suffered two broken legs,’ Castillo said.

Despite being in agony having been body slammed to the ground by the intruder, the elderly homeowner managed to grab his firearm. 

And the best part:

Police said the rambling man was shot at least two or three times inside the home before collapsing.

Yeah, but:

‘I think it’s a textbook example of self-defense, and I really, really hope he does not face charges,’ neighbor Betsy Weiss said.

It’s Los fucking Angeles, so anything’s possible — but I think the “two broken legs” thing should cause even an L.A. district attorney to think twice before pressing charges.

But the locals should start warming up the tar and plucking the chicken feathers, just in case.

Dept. Of Righteous Shootings

Righteous Shootings

Now as we all know, cops are usually disqualified from being lauded for a Righteous Shooting because, damn it, it’s their job to shoot scumbags.

However, on this occasion I’m going to give Our Hero a waiver.

A man allegedly tried to carjack an off-duty Harris County deputy’s car Friday afternoon, around 2:45 p.m. in Atascocita, outside of Houston, and was shot dead by the deputy.

Fine, but why the waiver?  Off-duty cops are still on duty if a crime is being committed, right?

Uh huh.  Except that in this case:

FOX News reported that the deputy’s child was in the vehicle at the time the incident occurred.

So he went from being a cop to being a dad protecting his little girl.  Clearly, a case of a Righteous Shooting if ever I saw one.

You may disagree with me, but you’d be wrong.