"In early May 1998...I met a friend of mine who I have loved...for among other things...her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness bordering on savagery." (Arundhati Roy in Conversation with Howard Zinn 2002)
Yorkshire....
I think that there is NOTHING in your regional geography or psycho-geography (Will Self) to separate you from any other shire...same old bilbo bag a’ shite/dicks...as anywhere else. Do not flatter yourselves...
There is an accent...the trappings of a regional dialect that are location specific...a flag bearing the white rose...and the culinary fame associated with puddings...ie. fuck all .
Instead of saying “NO”
You say….
I have now lived in Yorkshire for over 4 months...two months in the historic city of York and over two months in close by Selby...both whilst being homeless...'poor poor pitiful me' (Zevon)..but I feel that it is sufficient time to get a sense of any pronounced idiosyncratic differences.
The erasure of any significant and meaningful regional difference is long since complete. All that remains of any distinct/unique culture is a derivative… co-opted for branding in a commercial sense. The most egregious/obscene example of this…I observed in Edinburgh…by way of analogy to Yorkshire. A gift set, presumably for a man of an X-Box Computer handset/controller that had been sheathed in Tartan (see picture below). The utilisation of any regional historical peculiarities chiefly exists as a branding exercise in a commercial sense….but just like the derivative market in finance…it is so far removed and abstracted from any authenticity/ anything real as to be rendered utterly meaningless. The extent to which this occurs in Yorkshire as elsewhere serves as a fig leaf (or perhaps more apropos in the case of Yorkshire.. a tea leaf)…to disguise its most remarkable facet…that their are zero discernible significant differences in the people and region from the wider homogenisation of culture that has taken place throughout the country and the globalised west more broadly.
Yorkshire is remarkable only in the sense that it exhibits myriad similarities with other purportedly unique cultures…the conformity of non-conformity. The total immersion, enculturation, and internalisation of the values associated with this transition/trajectory bare only the faintest echoes to anything that could be described as ‘special’. The assimilation is complete…watching re-runs of Last of the Summer T.V Mong Juice..is the closest you can get to nostalgia…for a fictionalised Golden Age.
There was a Harry Enfield sketch in the 1990s that lampooned a particular archetype of Yorkshire Man. (link below).
George ‘Integrity’ Whitebread : 'I say what I like and I like what I bloody well say'
I always found Harry Enfield’s caricatures to be crude and unsophisticated. Which I am aware was entirely the point in the case/instance of George Whitebread... deliberately being juxtaposed with modern/liberal/sophisticated/learned/intellectual/cosmopolitan/urbane types to accentuate his apparent verbal crudeness. The ruddy faced George Whitebread would rub up against then fairly modern fashionable ideas of political correctness, psychotherapy etc etc to provide the necessary friction for fairly cheap laughs...and thus not that funny (in my opinion). Ultimately the character of George is being ridiculed and derided...for his boorishness/crassness. Even the slightest kernel of truth to that caricature of the plain speaking Yorkshire Man has long since been neutered...
That no nonsense/plain speaking/bluntness...regardless of its hyperbolic rendering by Harry Enfield likely had it's historic roots in land and people...Anglo-Saxon…specifically The Franks…
The Franks were a Germanic tribe, situated around northern France (hence the name), Belgium (Tournai) en Western Germany (Frankfurt). The Given name is derived from that. In Dutch we still have a saying "Vrank en vrij": Meaning the Franks were a free people, as opposed to (Roman, Celtic) serfs.
The very same plain speaking/ directness has been tightly reined in...gagged and more recently muzzled (symbolically masked during C19).
Free Speech is the fundamental freedom on which all others rest...for this tendency towards directness/ honesty...to have at one point been considered to be a regionally specific trait should have been something to be very proud/protective of...it implies an unwavering/uncompromising commitment toward Truth...in whatever accent it is delivered… however you may pronounce Knorr/No.. The Franks...from where the term is likely derived... spoke freely…. which embodied their status as that of a free people/not serfs...
The obliteration of that regional trait and perhaps, I would suggest, the only one worth having (plain speaking Frankness denoting a fidelity to Truth) is self-evident...Yorkshire and its citizens were no more or no less cowed by the C19 episode than anywhere else in the UK. Their response to Lockdown was in lockstep with every other part of the UK. They bear the same cross of SHAME….it has approximately the same weight and form as that of other counties…even entire countries. I would be unsurprised if that famed commune/refuge of libertines and alternative types (Hebden Bridge)…was statistically more compliant than that of the regional average.
There was no regionally specific revolt in Yorkshire amongst these once frank plain-speaking types...to the many self-evident absurdities...The people of Yorkshire had been potty trained to call a spade...a horticultural garden implement....like everywhere else. Do I sit down or stand up to wear a mask in a restaurant ? How many or what type of masks shall I use to muzzle my own child before I have them irreparably (and in some instances fatally) poisoned ? etc etc
The numbers that give the lie to any notion of uniqueness or regional specificity are 80:20. Those who willingly responded with Milgram like obedience (80%) and those who did not (20%)…. ‘Men lie...women lie…numbers don’t’ (JayZ). They are the only numbers that matter and the only numbers you should/will be judged upon. Not your bank balance or how many dildos you may own/possess/have ready access to.
Five to one, baby
One in five
No one here gets out alive, now
You get yours, baby
I'll get mine
Gonna make it, baby
If we try
The old get old
And the young get stronger
May take a week
And it may take longer
They got the guns
But we got the numbers
Gonna win, yeah
We're takin' over
Come on!
When the shit hit the fan…you shat the bed… just like your once warring red rose neighbours on the other side of the Pennines/watershed…from where I hail. They are able to boast a crumbly, chalky, creamy, cheese (Lancashire) which is alright but a little bland…I like Gorgonzola (very much like Ms Lawson).. Danish Blue and when I had recovered from/overcome my nightmarish sheep experience/episode on the Pennines.. Manchego. But both counties (just like everywhere else) now face the deeply disconcerting reality that 80% of their populations are walking talking petri dishes/time bombs/disease vectors (kind of ironic given all the retarded as fuck hand sanitising that went on everywhere during C19… and to some extent still does).
That the excess mortality figures post 2021 are not significantly larger than they already catastrophically/alarmingly are…is chiefly down/owed to the existence of quite miraculous systems of sanitation and the marvels of the civil engineering infrastructure that support them in a modern industrialised society. These vital systems on which we depend and take for granted are HIGHLY vulnerable to disruption…just as a ‘massive chunk’ (Zuby) 80% of the citizens of Yorkshire are now HIGHLY vulnerable to Typhus/influenza/cholera and many other pestilences and diseases. I think it is highly likely that the reader at this point is even anecdotally aware of those within their own circle of friends/family/colleagues who they believe/know have prematurely succumbed or suffered as a consequence of this immunological vulnerability (I am), which I believe was the primary intention of the mRNA Gene Therapy/Bio-Weapon. (as increasingly do many others)
There were 17 cholera cases reported in 2023, all of which were reported in England. This was a large 15% decrease compared to 2022 where 20 cases were reported. So…nothing to see here you might well reasonably conclude...a ‘nothing burger’ in modern parlance. You may well have your media driven concerns about contracting Monkey Pox Gay Aids Dick/MPOX (aka previously dormant small pox/genital herpes triggered by the C19 gene therapy and a weakened/fucked immune system)…but, I would suggest, there are far more serious plagues closer to home (much like MPOX as genital herpes/small pox rebranded)…that have been waiting patiently. I concede these numbers are on their face…are no great cause for alarm…but a month is a long time in civil engineering/sanitation…with the disruption to fossil fuel supplies. Influenza (the common cold) is far more serious if you have been harbouring it for weeks/months without your bodies immunological systems detecting it or mounting the appropriate mechanisms of response etc etc. I do not intend to be alarmist…but if I had a fucked immune system like the overwhelming majority of the population…these are some of the numbers I would be tracking/paying close attention to. That is not to say specifically cholera…but my point is that there are a veritable feast of what were once common/deadly illnesses/diseases in this country…that have/had effectively been ‘eradicated’ largely as a consequence of developments in sanitation…These, I would suggest, have once again become viable and potent threats/risks to a host population that is immunologically damaged and far less capable of combating them…(regardless of whatever nightmarish chamber of horrors are contained within the steel walls of Porton Down/Fort Detrick etc etc.)
Equally, I would be particularly alert/sensitive to the behavioural/psychological trends/shifts taking place…‘barbarism is a disease of civilisation’ (John Grey)….I do not own a Smart Phone, a Smart Fridge or much of the high tech paraphernalia of progress/ the modern world…nevertheless (or perhaps because of this) I can clearly detect the slide towards barbarism within the wider culture…most notably through the increased prevalence of sadism…which cannot simply/exclusively be assigned to the innate cruelty of women and their ever increasing representation in the workplace/within the institutional bureaucracies/structures/state…although it is certainly/unquestionably a feature…that accelerates and reinforces the former. I think the naked unmasked wickedness that could be observed during the C19 episode…to include the administering of harmful vaccines….has had the effect of at least raising the spectre of the diabolical/malevolence in many who had hitherto been cocooned in a peculiarly stupefying Panglossian worldview…a feature of much/most of highly propagandised Disneyfied/conditioned Western societies.
Much of the first person testimony of the naked sadism/cruelty that took place in geriatric/care home settings all across the country…was not aberrant… nor did it take place in a vacuum. In the confected drama/narrative of the herculean effort to ‘flatten the curve’/ tackling the C19 Influenza like virus…was the conspicuous utilisation of sadism…a sub strain of barbarism….it’s precursor. The latency of sadism amongst/within all human beings is well understood…but what was perhaps most horrifying to myself and others was…the relative ease with which it was activated/catalysed and weaponised amongst and against the general population. No institution of state or civil society was resistant or immune. A feature of our advanced technological age was that many examples of this sadistic behaviour were captured/digitally. It is no longer necessary to seek examples of the ‘banality of evil’ (Hannah Arendt) within the musty pages of history books or the heavily curated grainy footage of the history channel…they were published in abundance in digital/pixelated clarity with accompanying audio.
I think that unreconstructed barbarism will be/is being deliberately generated/ encouraged/made permissible in this country…it will become increasingly extreme/prevalent in the very near future. I believe that the overt systematic barbarism with which Israel is prosecuting the conflict/massacre in Gaza...is, in part, a conscious and deliberate intention to achieve this (sewing dragons teeth etc etc). I am referring to the systematic raping, amputations/torture of prisoners…the naked and unashamed wickedness…in contravention to all rules of war/ethics/engagement/morality.
These manifestations of barbarism/savagery will find expression in the domestic sphere (UK) by design as internecine conflicts are deliberately encouraged/provoked on a much larger scale to that which was recently witnessed in the riots/violence and widespread public disorder following the incident/murder of three young children in Southport.
In conditions of relative scarcity, where there are also corresponding civil infrastructure failures/breakdown likely owing to disruptions in fossil fuel supply…that latency (sadism) will find greater expression, activation and fulfilment. I think the conditions for this to take place will be an inevitable consequence of a wider war with Iran…which I believe will be titularly prosecuted by Donald Trump. Inciting, instigating, fermenting, nurturing that barbarism in the domestic sphere will enable the authoritarian/totalitarian response…which I suggest is the purpose. The restoration of order… via technocratic, digital control and the imposition of a new economic system (CBDC). To achieve this requires the further/continued utilisation/harnessing of sadism by the State and its deployment through the various institutions over which it presides… either directly or indirectly…with a concomitant slide towards authoritarianism.
How Yorkshire responds to this…I do not know. I suspect much like the 80:20 figures above…there will be no significant deviation from the norm. Regardless of which side of the Pennines you reside, whatever the flag/rose/colour to which you pledge allegiance, whichever are your preferred brand of stock cubes…in the final analysis it will come down…as it always has done… to the individual citizen….
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”
―Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956
WHAT SHE SAYS….(see video below)
The now highly immuno-compromised/degraded population in Yorkshire is consistent with the national average. It matters not how many Yorkshire puddings you eat (with lashings of Kool Aid) or whether you posses a closely guarded family recipe for making Yorkshire puddings…which I would suggest is likely amongst some of the Yorkshire based readership of my scathing critique of their county. I am not from Yorkshire yet I developed both my own technique and recipe via culinary innovation and aptitude. Gifts/talents with which I was blessed by God. I digress.
Again…do not flatter yourself…the same critique/criticisms are pretty much identical to Lancashire…where I was able to intimately bear witness to the exact same sadistic tendency, cowardice/ignorance and uncritical Milgram behaviour in real time.
The castration of that most important/vital of traits…(the ability to speak truthfully and directly/frankly)...has taken place/been delivered both within and without the citizen. There is the external overlay of language and linguistic adaptions to various legislation, the seeding of politically correct language, HR, behavioural codes and the attendant social/status driven policing/conditioning of those speech codes… relentlessly reinforced via propaganda/media but… there is also a corresponding and simultaneous change within the individual...
That George Whitebread constantly repeats the line “No Offence” after delivering some type of seemingly 'to the bone' 'offensive' observation is telling...Chief amongst the internalizing pathological mechanisms of the verbal and the consequent mental castration/lobotomy that has taken place has been the deliberate/intentional weaponization of words as semantic weapons...Words are directly experienced by the pathological narcissist as harmful and dangerous. The acceleration/intensification of the trait within this pathological category is occurring deliberately/intentionally with the designation of HATE speech...the fairly recent descriptions of 'triggered' /'snow flake' etc etc in modern parlance are merely common vernacular/attempts at describing this behaviour/pathology.
“So in a democracy no one, however powerful or impotent, can have a right not to be insulted or offended.” (Ronald Dworkin)
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2006/03/23/the-right-to-ridicule/
As the quick march to Tyranny/carrying to fair (Anne Finch) takes place before your very eyes...even the unintentional wisdom of Roy Walker...whose Catch Phrase was 'say what you see' has been lost. An inability to see, describe or recognise objective reality.
To create, sustain and protect a rich individual regionally specific culture...rests...as all other freedoms do...on the ability to speak freely in pursuit of TRUTH. Culinary niceties...may come and go...they are quite literally a matter of taste...
That you have self-evidently surrendered the cornerstone/bedrock of any culture worth having... renders the residual trappings/nonsense worthless....York itself is little more than Harry Potter Disneyland...Selby… a glorified hairdressers…
With the imposition of tightly regulated and policed speech codes there are the consequent restraint/callipers placed upon thought. I think Phillip K Dicks… ‘Time Out of Joint’ was largely an attempt to build a novel around the understanding that we live in a reality of words… the collective psychosis/delusion of our present condition is the attempt to deny or rather to control those words (that linguistic landscape) and subsequently to shape/bend that reality…in increasingly diabolical/wicked ways.
“Relation of word to object . . . what is a word? Arbitrary sign. But we live in words. Our reality, among words not things. No such thing as thing anyhow; a gestalt in the mind.”
― Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint
With the micro-management of words, speech…follows the management of thought, behaviour and the construction of reality via shared/imposed narratives. The ability to think in words and thus to imagine or dream a better reality…will be lost sooner than you think. You will be offered/are currently being offered any model of reality…as long as it is black.
The flag that you have historically rallied around bearing the white rose…can and will be turned into its opposite overnight….the point is…you would have been rendered incapable of noticing. The cognitive dissonance of it being at once both black and white…is the purpose…just as 2+2 must be made to equal 5. It is quite conceivable to me that the same rose could well be substituted for an emoji. Even if you had at this stage retained the capacity to notice…you would lack the spine to ever point it out…just like your cowardly immoral ‘keep my head well below the parapet’ approach to C19. The truth is seldom pleasant…it makes it no less the truth.
Job 2:9 "Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die."
“Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
―George Orwell,1984
Supplementary Music and Other References
Black Roses (Ian Brown, Ripples)
Kelly’s Heroes (Shaun William Ryder, Black Grape)
Words Just Get in the Way (Richard Ashcroft)