The Next Enclosure
*
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
Henry David Thoreau.
And then he was caught up, shadowed, stripped; cowering in a corner. All his life he had been cowering in a corner, the belts snaking out. And now, when the nights were cold and nothing could warm him against the ancient chills, now when the most vicious ape men cartoon images populated the entire Western mindset, when his anger and emotional vacuity and his contempt for the governing classes, now when the spin meisters lied and lied and lied and whipped up hysteria on the most fragile grounds, deliberately instilling fear and hysteria into the public for their own selfish gain, to ensure their own re-election, he was gracefully pinnned, cowering, hiding; and he reached out and toucher her and said: come with me, be mine, let us walk together. And so he laughed at their own misbegotten way, at the way the seven years, or was it nine year cycles came sweeping back into his lives, back to Una's, where he had stumbled in at 3am as an utterly drunk teenager and Una would sober him up with black coffee and ice cream.
When a handsome man had bundled him into the back of a van, when a transsexual ran her fingers across his face and said: you'd look good in drag. When this moment had seemed entirely theirs and history had been written just for them, just for that moment. In the back of Brutus's. His fluorescent shirt lit up. All the faces of the old queens, his constant audience, turned to gape. At beauty. At youth. And he pretended to ignore them, the watching eyes. And decades later he stood up and spoke. And no one knew what had really happened. No one. So he wrote history as the one who had survived to tell the tale; yet he listened to others, the terrible tales, the abuse, the exploitation, The Rex. He had been there the other day, at what was now discreetly called The Rex Centre, a block of serviced apartment which told no tale of what had really happened there.
He liked to think he had not suffered. He had concocted a story to cover it; he was drunk, he was happy, he was hunted, he had put himself out there. Something to be; something to say you had been; rent boy. As if he could really make any difference. And decades later he stood on the paved ground; so different from the dark clay and the mysterious alcoves which had once been this place. Before they had brought in the fully grown trees; planted them right there. He heard the stories of the evil pain those boys had suffered. They shook uncontrollably as they told their stories, as they spoke of something they had seen as pure evil; those bars we had been allowed into purely as bait, those bars where the men had queued to buy them drinks, to bid for the attention. The biggest payer always won; but things were never that simple between the payer and the client.
He remembered to this day the delegation from the ruling queen; when they had cornered him at the Rex, sat him down and offered him everything. These criminal gangs, he had known them well; always attracted by the lure of the illicit. It was an offer, not a threat; well at least at this stage; and he, already zipping around town in a fast new sports car and already hopelessly drunk on his way to recovery, to university, to a normal life, listened to the offer with a degree of interest. He always needed a sugar daddy to protect him from the slings and arrows. It was a compliment. He was the best looking boy on the block, at least at this fragile moment. He knew the gangster who had sent them to make the offer. They had talked drunkenly on a night he could not remember, their little group, drowning in a sea of alcohol, losing consciousness. He liked the lads who had been sent to make the offer; they all said the bloke wasn't very demanding in bed and always saw them right; but there was something that warned him off. Only the other day the body of one his friends, forced to dig his own grave at gun point in the National Park, had been discovered. He was already well cared for and could afford to say no, dangerous though it might be. Already another desperate queen desperate to save him from the streets; who's money he always took, who's expensive apartment he lived in, who's smart fast car he drove, who's account he used to fill up with petrol; looked after him. And the current provider was an easy touch, barely requiring him to lift a finger as his tongue explored his body. They were almost friends, the sex required so little effort.
The gangster wouldn't be like that; delighted at the crumbs which fell from the table, the bulges he allowed to be fumblingly exploited. Every prostitute knew that fantasy was more powerful than truth; that the flesh was weak but the heart even weaker, that desire was more lucrative if unfulfilled. That prick teasers always got paid the best. All my life I've just wanted to be a normal person; he declared. They listened, were they listening? The rows of blank faces in dingy seats. Normal? He laughed. They had no idea. But his own shadows were just that, shadows long past. Those embraces, those adventures, those fabulous drunken nights, they were all so long ago history had swallowed up their import, and when he heard the voice of strangers, boys who's stories echoed his own but now came from the mouths of grown men, he tried to remember if he had seen them, there in those foul nights, in the dark corners at the Bottoms Up Bar and the infamous Rex Hotel. And now, as an older man, he stood and looked at the neat little sign: Rex Service Centre; and only he could know what really went on here, at this very spot, and know the stories of those boys, their suffering, their exploitation, their braggadocio, their bluster, their sadness and distress as yet another bastard pumped his money and his semen into their fragile, underfed bodies.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/man-with-swine-flu-dies-in-adelaide-20090619-cr4y.html
A West Australian man has become the first person with swine flu to die in Australia.
The 26-year-old man died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) on Friday afternoon after being diagnosed with the virus on Thursday.
South Australian health authorities could not yet confirm whether the man died because of swine flu, as he had been suffering from a number of other serious health conditions.
The man had been transferred from Alice Springs Hospital to the RAH intensive care unit on Monday.
SA Health Minister John Hill said the RAH would continue to investigate the cause of death.
"What we do know is that this man was seriously ill from a number of conditions and the reason he was sent to the Royal Adelaide was because of those conditions," he said.
"How the swine flu interacted with those conditions and what's the ultimate cause of death is something we can't really speculate about."
SA Health's chief medical officer Paddy Phillips said he did not, as of yet, have all the details surrounding the Aboriginal man's death.
"Although the patient was diagnosed as positive for swine flu yesterday, his other medical conditions had dramatically deteriorated by the time he got to Adelaide," Professor Phillips said.
"We will be letting the Commonwealth know exactly whether or not H1N1 was a major contributor or not."
Prof Phillips said WA health authorities and the commonwealth's chief medical adviser had been informed, and that the man's death would not yet be added to the list of casualties from swine flu.
"This is very recent and while we have a large amount of information, we clearly don't have all of the information - that will require further review."
Prof Phillips told reporters on Friday evening the RAH would work with the Communicable Diseases Branch.
He said it was incredibly unlikely the man could have contracted the influenza A (H1N1) virus at the RAH and that staff who treated the man prior to him being diagnosed with swine flu had since been prescribed a course of Tamiflu.
"All of the appropriate procedures have been followed," he said.
"So I think it is incredibly unlikely this was caught in SA.
"Swine flu in the vast majority of people is a mild illness.
"However, we know from overseas experience that a certain proportion of people do get so sick they need to be in hospital and, unfortunately, a certain proportion do ultimately succumb - largely people with pre-existing medical conditions.
"Unfortunately, there is a higher incidence of the illnesses that make people vulnerable to complications from influenza, as well as H1N1, in the Aboriginal population and they tend to get those illnesses - diabetes, lung disease, heart disease, kidney disease - at younger ages."
In a statement released on Friday night, Federal health Minister Nicola Roxon said all governments were focused on minimising the number of cases of serious disease as much as possible.
"During the PROTECT phase announced this week, the government is focused on identifying, targeting and treating those most vulnerable to severe complications from swine flu," Ms Roxon said.
It is understood the man came from a small Aboriginal community about 700km west of Alice Springs.
Prof Phillips would not detail the medical conditions the man was suffering from, except to say they had affected a number of his organ systems.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25656849-7583,00.html
STEVE Fielding recently attended a climate change conference in Washington, DC. Listening to the papers presented, the Family First senator became puzzled that the scientific analyses they provided directly contradicted the reasons the Australian government had been giving as the justification for its emissions trading legislation...
The questions posed were:
* Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5percent since 1998 while global temperature cooled during the same period? If so, why did the temperature not increase, and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
* Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th-century phase of global warming) were not unusual as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history? If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?
* Is it the case that all computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990 to 2008, whereas in fact there were only eight years of warming followed by 10years of stasis and cooling? If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy-making?
As independent scientists attending the meeting, we found the minister's advisers unable, indeed in some part unwilling, to answer the questions.
We were told that the first question needed rephrasing because it did not take account of the global thermal balance and the fact much of the heat that drives the climate system is lodged in the ocean.
Que? What is it about "carbon dioxide has increased and temperature has decreased" that the minister's science advisers don't understand?
The second question was dismissed with the comment that climatic events that occurred in the distant geological past were not relevant to policy concerned with contemporary climate change. Try telling that to geologist Ian Plimer.
And regarding the accuracy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's computer models, we were assured that better models were in the pipeline. So the minister's advisers apparently concede that the models that have guided preparation of the emissions trading scheme legislation are inadequate.
These are not adequate responses.
It was reported in the Business Age last July that the ministry of climate change's green paper on climate change, which was issued as a prelude to carbon dioxide taxation legislation, contained scientific errors and over-simplifications. Almost 12 months on, our experience confirms that the scientific advice Wong is receiving is inadequate to justify the exorbitantly costly upheaval of our society's energy usage that will be driven by the government's ETS legislation.
All Australians owe Fielding a vote of thanks for having had the political courage to ask in parliament where the climate empress's clothes have gone. Together with the senator, and the public, we await with interest any further answers to his questions that Wong's advisers may yet provide.
Geologist Bob Carter, carbon modeller David Evans, hydrologist-climatologist Stewart Franks and meteorologist-climatologist Bill Kininmonth attended the meeting between Steve Fielding, Penny Wong, Chief Scientist Penny Sackett and ANU Climate Change Institute executive director Will Steffen. Sackett has so far declined to answer Fielding's questions on this page.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25646975-5013450,00.html
For better analysis, you need only jump in a taxi to understand what happens when there is a sense that a nation has lost its way. My taxi driver from Heathrow told me he voted BNP for the first time. The next day, another taxi driver said the same. Another day, another taxi driver, another first-time BNP voter. For them, mainstream parties stopped listening to the concerns of working-class people about immigration. Likewise, you will learn more from the letters pages of British newspapers than from the reams of so-called expert analysis devoted to denouncing the BNP's success as a depressing moment for democracy. "The political process must address such concerns, not simply dismiss them as wrong. Denial simply makes things worse, and repression fuels rage among people who feel they have lost their country and want it back," one correspondent wrote to The Independent.
The emergence of the BNP - and, indeed, other similar anti-immigration parties across Europe - is yet another wake-up call that large swaths of the West have failed to discuss the consequences of fast-growing immigration honestly and openly.
Once again we are reminded that multiculturalism rendered such discussion distasteful, where elites presented immigration as a necessary part of a tolerant society, no matter how incompatible the values of these migrants. All cultures were equal, they preached, while deriding Western culture as somehow less equal. Any reservations about the costs and consequences of immigration were discarded as vile xenophobia from the ignorant, intolerant masses.
It is easy to dismiss the concerns of the working class when you are far removed from the daily, social challenges of immigration.
Our own Mark Latham best described that disconnect back in 2002 when he said that: "In my experience, the strongest supporters of the rights agenda are those who do not have to face the daily consequences of irresponsible behaviour. They have the resources to buy themselves away from social problems ... This gives them the luxury of being able to talk about human rights without the need for social responsibility."
How horrifying it must be for the Left to discover that they are partly responsible for the rise of anti-immigration parties such as the BNP. When people feel disenfranchised, ignored by mainstream politicians who have failed to treat them as adults entitled to a serious debate about immigration and a fading national identity, they will resort to unattractive fringe parties to vent their anger.
They turn to parties such as the BNP and the obsessively nationalist UK Independence Party, which out-polled the ruling British Labour Party. And to Hungary's far right party Jobbik, otherwise known as the Movement for a Better Hungary, which won 14.8 per cent of the poll, securing almost as many votes as the ruling Hungarian socialists. And Geert Wilders's Freedom Party in the Netherlands, which doubled its vote campaigning on anti-Islamic concerns, nationalist parties such as True Finns in Finland and Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party, which picked up a second seat in Strasbourg.
Years ago now, writing in Prospect magazine, David Goodhart wrote an important essay warning liberals about the progressive dilemma that confronts many Western countries: sharing and solidarity can often conflict with diversity. "Acts of sharing are more smoothly and generously negotiated if we take for granted a limited set of common values and assumptions," he wrote.
Yet, the more diverse that once homogenous societies become, the more the common culture is eroded. He warned that the reaction to growing diversity will happen through decades, if not generations. After last week's European elections, more people are now realising the inevitable price of diversity.
The NSW coast, north of Sydney, Australia.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.
Henry David Thoreau.
And then he was caught up, shadowed, stripped; cowering in a corner. All his life he had been cowering in a corner, the belts snaking out. And now, when the nights were cold and nothing could warm him against the ancient chills, now when the most vicious ape men cartoon images populated the entire Western mindset, when his anger and emotional vacuity and his contempt for the governing classes, now when the spin meisters lied and lied and lied and whipped up hysteria on the most fragile grounds, deliberately instilling fear and hysteria into the public for their own selfish gain, to ensure their own re-election, he was gracefully pinnned, cowering, hiding; and he reached out and toucher her and said: come with me, be mine, let us walk together. And so he laughed at their own misbegotten way, at the way the seven years, or was it nine year cycles came sweeping back into his lives, back to Una's, where he had stumbled in at 3am as an utterly drunk teenager and Una would sober him up with black coffee and ice cream.
When a handsome man had bundled him into the back of a van, when a transsexual ran her fingers across his face and said: you'd look good in drag. When this moment had seemed entirely theirs and history had been written just for them, just for that moment. In the back of Brutus's. His fluorescent shirt lit up. All the faces of the old queens, his constant audience, turned to gape. At beauty. At youth. And he pretended to ignore them, the watching eyes. And decades later he stood up and spoke. And no one knew what had really happened. No one. So he wrote history as the one who had survived to tell the tale; yet he listened to others, the terrible tales, the abuse, the exploitation, The Rex. He had been there the other day, at what was now discreetly called The Rex Centre, a block of serviced apartment which told no tale of what had really happened there.
He liked to think he had not suffered. He had concocted a story to cover it; he was drunk, he was happy, he was hunted, he had put himself out there. Something to be; something to say you had been; rent boy. As if he could really make any difference. And decades later he stood on the paved ground; so different from the dark clay and the mysterious alcoves which had once been this place. Before they had brought in the fully grown trees; planted them right there. He heard the stories of the evil pain those boys had suffered. They shook uncontrollably as they told their stories, as they spoke of something they had seen as pure evil; those bars we had been allowed into purely as bait, those bars where the men had queued to buy them drinks, to bid for the attention. The biggest payer always won; but things were never that simple between the payer and the client.
He remembered to this day the delegation from the ruling queen; when they had cornered him at the Rex, sat him down and offered him everything. These criminal gangs, he had known them well; always attracted by the lure of the illicit. It was an offer, not a threat; well at least at this stage; and he, already zipping around town in a fast new sports car and already hopelessly drunk on his way to recovery, to university, to a normal life, listened to the offer with a degree of interest. He always needed a sugar daddy to protect him from the slings and arrows. It was a compliment. He was the best looking boy on the block, at least at this fragile moment. He knew the gangster who had sent them to make the offer. They had talked drunkenly on a night he could not remember, their little group, drowning in a sea of alcohol, losing consciousness. He liked the lads who had been sent to make the offer; they all said the bloke wasn't very demanding in bed and always saw them right; but there was something that warned him off. Only the other day the body of one his friends, forced to dig his own grave at gun point in the National Park, had been discovered. He was already well cared for and could afford to say no, dangerous though it might be. Already another desperate queen desperate to save him from the streets; who's money he always took, who's expensive apartment he lived in, who's smart fast car he drove, who's account he used to fill up with petrol; looked after him. And the current provider was an easy touch, barely requiring him to lift a finger as his tongue explored his body. They were almost friends, the sex required so little effort.
The gangster wouldn't be like that; delighted at the crumbs which fell from the table, the bulges he allowed to be fumblingly exploited. Every prostitute knew that fantasy was more powerful than truth; that the flesh was weak but the heart even weaker, that desire was more lucrative if unfulfilled. That prick teasers always got paid the best. All my life I've just wanted to be a normal person; he declared. They listened, were they listening? The rows of blank faces in dingy seats. Normal? He laughed. They had no idea. But his own shadows were just that, shadows long past. Those embraces, those adventures, those fabulous drunken nights, they were all so long ago history had swallowed up their import, and when he heard the voice of strangers, boys who's stories echoed his own but now came from the mouths of grown men, he tried to remember if he had seen them, there in those foul nights, in the dark corners at the Bottoms Up Bar and the infamous Rex Hotel. And now, as an older man, he stood and looked at the neat little sign: Rex Service Centre; and only he could know what really went on here, at this very spot, and know the stories of those boys, their suffering, their exploitation, their braggadocio, their bluster, their sadness and distress as yet another bastard pumped his money and his semen into their fragile, underfed bodies.
THE BIGGER STORY:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/man-with-swine-flu-dies-in-adelaide-20090619-cr4y.html
A West Australian man has become the first person with swine flu to die in Australia.
The 26-year-old man died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital (RAH) on Friday afternoon after being diagnosed with the virus on Thursday.
South Australian health authorities could not yet confirm whether the man died because of swine flu, as he had been suffering from a number of other serious health conditions.
The man had been transferred from Alice Springs Hospital to the RAH intensive care unit on Monday.
SA Health Minister John Hill said the RAH would continue to investigate the cause of death.
"What we do know is that this man was seriously ill from a number of conditions and the reason he was sent to the Royal Adelaide was because of those conditions," he said.
"How the swine flu interacted with those conditions and what's the ultimate cause of death is something we can't really speculate about."
SA Health's chief medical officer Paddy Phillips said he did not, as of yet, have all the details surrounding the Aboriginal man's death.
"Although the patient was diagnosed as positive for swine flu yesterday, his other medical conditions had dramatically deteriorated by the time he got to Adelaide," Professor Phillips said.
"We will be letting the Commonwealth know exactly whether or not H1N1 was a major contributor or not."
Prof Phillips said WA health authorities and the commonwealth's chief medical adviser had been informed, and that the man's death would not yet be added to the list of casualties from swine flu.
"This is very recent and while we have a large amount of information, we clearly don't have all of the information - that will require further review."
Prof Phillips told reporters on Friday evening the RAH would work with the Communicable Diseases Branch.
He said it was incredibly unlikely the man could have contracted the influenza A (H1N1) virus at the RAH and that staff who treated the man prior to him being diagnosed with swine flu had since been prescribed a course of Tamiflu.
"All of the appropriate procedures have been followed," he said.
"So I think it is incredibly unlikely this was caught in SA.
"Swine flu in the vast majority of people is a mild illness.
"However, we know from overseas experience that a certain proportion of people do get so sick they need to be in hospital and, unfortunately, a certain proportion do ultimately succumb - largely people with pre-existing medical conditions.
"Unfortunately, there is a higher incidence of the illnesses that make people vulnerable to complications from influenza, as well as H1N1, in the Aboriginal population and they tend to get those illnesses - diabetes, lung disease, heart disease, kidney disease - at younger ages."
In a statement released on Friday night, Federal health Minister Nicola Roxon said all governments were focused on minimising the number of cases of serious disease as much as possible.
"During the PROTECT phase announced this week, the government is focused on identifying, targeting and treating those most vulnerable to severe complications from swine flu," Ms Roxon said.
It is understood the man came from a small Aboriginal community about 700km west of Alice Springs.
Prof Phillips would not detail the medical conditions the man was suffering from, except to say they had affected a number of his organ systems.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25656849-7583,00.html
STEVE Fielding recently attended a climate change conference in Washington, DC. Listening to the papers presented, the Family First senator became puzzled that the scientific analyses they provided directly contradicted the reasons the Australian government had been giving as the justification for its emissions trading legislation...
The questions posed were:
* Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5percent since 1998 while global temperature cooled during the same period? If so, why did the temperature not increase, and how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
* Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th-century phase of global warming) were not unusual as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth's history? If the warming was not unusual, why is it perceived to have been caused by human CO2 emissions and, in any event, why is warming a problem if the Earth has experienced similar warmings in the past?
* Is it the case that all computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990 to 2008, whereas in fact there were only eight years of warming followed by 10years of stasis and cooling? If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy-making?
As independent scientists attending the meeting, we found the minister's advisers unable, indeed in some part unwilling, to answer the questions.
We were told that the first question needed rephrasing because it did not take account of the global thermal balance and the fact much of the heat that drives the climate system is lodged in the ocean.
Que? What is it about "carbon dioxide has increased and temperature has decreased" that the minister's science advisers don't understand?
The second question was dismissed with the comment that climatic events that occurred in the distant geological past were not relevant to policy concerned with contemporary climate change. Try telling that to geologist Ian Plimer.
And regarding the accuracy of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's computer models, we were assured that better models were in the pipeline. So the minister's advisers apparently concede that the models that have guided preparation of the emissions trading scheme legislation are inadequate.
These are not adequate responses.
It was reported in the Business Age last July that the ministry of climate change's green paper on climate change, which was issued as a prelude to carbon dioxide taxation legislation, contained scientific errors and over-simplifications. Almost 12 months on, our experience confirms that the scientific advice Wong is receiving is inadequate to justify the exorbitantly costly upheaval of our society's energy usage that will be driven by the government's ETS legislation.
All Australians owe Fielding a vote of thanks for having had the political courage to ask in parliament where the climate empress's clothes have gone. Together with the senator, and the public, we await with interest any further answers to his questions that Wong's advisers may yet provide.
Geologist Bob Carter, carbon modeller David Evans, hydrologist-climatologist Stewart Franks and meteorologist-climatologist Bill Kininmonth attended the meeting between Steve Fielding, Penny Wong, Chief Scientist Penny Sackett and ANU Climate Change Institute executive director Will Steffen. Sackett has so far declined to answer Fielding's questions on this page.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25646975-5013450,00.html
For better analysis, you need only jump in a taxi to understand what happens when there is a sense that a nation has lost its way. My taxi driver from Heathrow told me he voted BNP for the first time. The next day, another taxi driver said the same. Another day, another taxi driver, another first-time BNP voter. For them, mainstream parties stopped listening to the concerns of working-class people about immigration. Likewise, you will learn more from the letters pages of British newspapers than from the reams of so-called expert analysis devoted to denouncing the BNP's success as a depressing moment for democracy. "The political process must address such concerns, not simply dismiss them as wrong. Denial simply makes things worse, and repression fuels rage among people who feel they have lost their country and want it back," one correspondent wrote to The Independent.
The emergence of the BNP - and, indeed, other similar anti-immigration parties across Europe - is yet another wake-up call that large swaths of the West have failed to discuss the consequences of fast-growing immigration honestly and openly.
Once again we are reminded that multiculturalism rendered such discussion distasteful, where elites presented immigration as a necessary part of a tolerant society, no matter how incompatible the values of these migrants. All cultures were equal, they preached, while deriding Western culture as somehow less equal. Any reservations about the costs and consequences of immigration were discarded as vile xenophobia from the ignorant, intolerant masses.
It is easy to dismiss the concerns of the working class when you are far removed from the daily, social challenges of immigration.
Our own Mark Latham best described that disconnect back in 2002 when he said that: "In my experience, the strongest supporters of the rights agenda are those who do not have to face the daily consequences of irresponsible behaviour. They have the resources to buy themselves away from social problems ... This gives them the luxury of being able to talk about human rights without the need for social responsibility."
How horrifying it must be for the Left to discover that they are partly responsible for the rise of anti-immigration parties such as the BNP. When people feel disenfranchised, ignored by mainstream politicians who have failed to treat them as adults entitled to a serious debate about immigration and a fading national identity, they will resort to unattractive fringe parties to vent their anger.
They turn to parties such as the BNP and the obsessively nationalist UK Independence Party, which out-polled the ruling British Labour Party. And to Hungary's far right party Jobbik, otherwise known as the Movement for a Better Hungary, which won 14.8 per cent of the poll, securing almost as many votes as the ruling Hungarian socialists. And Geert Wilders's Freedom Party in the Netherlands, which doubled its vote campaigning on anti-Islamic concerns, nationalist parties such as True Finns in Finland and Denmark's far-right Danish People's Party, which picked up a second seat in Strasbourg.
Years ago now, writing in Prospect magazine, David Goodhart wrote an important essay warning liberals about the progressive dilemma that confronts many Western countries: sharing and solidarity can often conflict with diversity. "Acts of sharing are more smoothly and generously negotiated if we take for granted a limited set of common values and assumptions," he wrote.
Yet, the more diverse that once homogenous societies become, the more the common culture is eroded. He warned that the reaction to growing diversity will happen through decades, if not generations. After last week's European elections, more people are now realising the inevitable price of diversity.
The NSW coast, north of Sydney, Australia.
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