The Union Jackal, January 2023

1,738 words

So, then. The first month of 2023 has passed, and Britannia’s New Year’s resolution is clearly to become even more nuts than she was last year. On the crazy scale, she is moving from being mad as a wet hen to being mad as Tucker Carlson’s laugh. We’ll start on the streets of London . . .

La Rose by any other name

Language is a major battlefield in the culture war, and a key redoubt is the renaming of buildings, schools, and streets due to past associations, real or imagined. But something strange has happened in Haringey, north London. Black Boy Lane is, or was, a street whose name has recently been changed in line with woke diktats. This was despite local authorities holding an extensive consultation with residents and finding that almost no one was offended by the name, including most of the black people who actually live there. They changed it anyway.

The first curiosity is the choice of new name. La Rose Lane sounds like a Broadway movie star of the 1950s, but that’s where you now live if you used to live in Black Boy Lane. And so the tainted and racist name has been removed from sight. Except it hasn’t. The council put up a new road sign that read: “La Rose Lane (Formerly Black Boy Lane)” This is what is so odd. If the name was deemed too offensive to be seen, why can it still be seen? The answer is, as a reminder that local authorities represent the provisional wing of the urban language police. If they can change the name of where you live, they can change a whole lot more.

Residents have fought back, as can be seen here. It’s rather a nice tale of English civil disobedience, and it turns out that John La Rose was some Commie bookseller from the 1960s. But there is a wider threat to people of color in this attempted name change. “La Rose” in French means, among other things, a species of small pink rose, rose meaning pink in that saucy Romance language. This is where the trouble starts.

If you have looked at the photo, you will note “N15” on both signs. It’s a London postcode. N15 is not the equivalent of MS13, but it is that way inclined, as London is notorious for its territorial and mostly black “postcode gangs.” Now, imagine the scenario the next time two gang members meet:

“I know you, bro. What you doing in our street? You is from da Black Boy Lane Crew, swear down.”

“Uh, yeah. We was. Now we da Pink Rose Gang. Get up, bro. Why you laughing?”

We must think of the trauma these rash changes may inflict on our communities of color.

A question of degree

The British police, who make the Keystone Kops look like Navy Seals, continue to see how low they can go in terms of professional standards. Of those officers not currently awaiting trial for a variety of alleged sexual and fraud offenses (and there are many), an increasing number are described as “functionally illiterate.” Now, something puzzles me about this, although I am quite prepared to believe it is true as educational standards in Britain continue to decline.

The Royal College of Policing (RCP) decreed in 2016 that all new officers had to have a university degree as of 2020. As I pointed out at the time, these were unlikely to be STEM degrees, thus ensuring that freshman officers arrived on the job with their heads full of junk ideology. So, if officers are turning up functionally illiterate, and yet they have degrees, then it follows that some universities are churning out students who can’t read or write to an acceptable level. Either this shocking fact stands, or the RCP have quietly dropped the requirement for Bachelor of Arts degree.

On inspection, this is exactly what happened, and now you can sit a few patsy exams if you want to get a smart uniform, a rainbow-colored police car, and powers of arrest. Notoriously, a single arrest in the UK requires several hours of paperwork. I imagine that will be something of a challenge if you can’t read or write properly.

Hello, bonny lad. I mean, lass

Scotland’s slot-mouthed premier Nicola Sturgeon has been doing her utmost to make sure that the country she leads so chaotically is just as ideologically messed up in the matter of gender as everyone else is. Her government passed a bill at the end of last year that would make it legal for children as young as 16 to nominate their own gender provided they have lived as the opposite sex for a few weeks.

You can buy Mark Gullick’s Bestest Boys here.

Social Justice Secretary Shona Robison called the passing of the bill “an historic day for Scotland.” Well, absolutely. It’s up there with The Battle of Bannockburn, Rabbie Burns’ first book of poetry, and that time every 30 or 40 years or so when Scotland qualify for the World Cup.

But, astonishingly, it has led to problems when it comes not just to the penile system, but the penal system. A dangerous sex offender called Andrew Burns (there is no evidence that he is a descendant of Rabbie) has been requesting a transfer to a women’s prison ever since he realized he was not Andy, but Tiffany, and this has set something of a precedent. The most recent hazard to women, even if they are in jail, is Adam Graham. He decided, Mike Tyson face tattoo and all, that he was actually Isla Bryson, popped on a blonde wig, and was from that day on a lassie, not a laddie, and so should be sent to a women’s prison. That is exactly what happened.

For once, there was an “outcry” — media-speak for “someone noticed” — and even Goldman-Sachs globalist Hindu midget Rishi Sunak, this month’s Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, stepped in to have the government block this latest grotesquerie.

A few points. Firstly, and in the interest of historical accuracy, Scotsmen are famous for wearing skirts, but they are called kilts and huge, ginger-haired men used to wear them into battle while playing bagpipes to further terrify the enemy. Secondly, the newspapers across the UK who reported this — all of them — referred to Graham as “she.” The media have absolutely colluded in this gender-based anarchy. Finally, rapists may be very bad men, but they are not entirely stupid, as rats who learn how to push a button in a laboratory for food pellets are not stupid. As woke and its various sub-clauses gradually eat away, moth-like, at the fabric of society, so too will rapists try to get near women. Hand them the means to do that, and they will surely take it. Isn’t it strange, the stealthy return of the misogyny that once caused so much distress on the Left?

Let us pray

Prayer in modern Britain often seems to be confined to praying your football team wins or that your next mortgage payment isn’t more than there is in your bank account. But some people are still old school, and take the meditative time to petition the Lord in the traditional way.

Not for long. Adam Smith-Connor was silently praying on a street in Bournemouth, England, with his back to an abortion clinic. When asked by police what he was doing, he told them exactly what he was doing: praying silently. His unborn child had been aborted many years before and he was praying for his soul. But the woke police don’t dig that kind of jive talk no more. Smith-Connor was cautioned and fined.

Prior to this, Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, a pro-life activist, had been arrested for the same crime of silent prayer opposite another abortion clinic, those little Auschwitzes of fetal destruction. The police asked her what she was doing standing there silently, and she told them she was praying inside her head. Now that’s Thoughtcrime right there. The police asked her to accompany them to a police station (as if they could find one) and she refused. They then arrested her under yet another sinister piece of anti-Christian legislation. The details of both cases can be found here in Christianity Today.

The legal instrument in question is called a PSPO, or Public Space Protection Order, and does precisely that. But here is the kicker line: “The ordinance prohibits protesting ‘whether by yourself or with others,’ and it defines protesting to include prayer.”

So prayer is now protesting. I suppose that must be where the word “Protestant” came from. One thing is certain: They would not have touched a Muslim or a black for the same ginned-up offence. This is a war specifically on Christianity, and should concern you whether or not you are a Christian (which I am not).

If those feet in ancient time did walk upon England’s pastures green, they would probably now be wearing an ankle monitor, because the UK is once again following the United States and Europe either in directly persecuting Christians or outsourcing the job to Muslim church-burners.

And finally . . .

I watch a lot of American media, probably far too much. I find myself watching Congressional committee hearings, for example, instead of working. But, as a keen observer of the English language, I do enjoy seeing the careers of some archaic words revived in the States. Currently, it is a pleasure to hear cable commentators using the word “nefarious.”

I didn’t know the roots of the word, but I put my money on Latin (usually a safe bet), and indeed it comes from nefas, meaning “crime” or “impiety.” It is quite different from “heinous,” which is usually applied to crimes rather than the designs behind them. I am of the opinion that although no one should ever commit a heinous crime, perhaps it might be fun to have at least one nefarious deed in your resumé.

Charles Dickens clearly retained an affection for the word throughout his career as he uses it in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, and one of his last pieces, “George Silverman’s Explanation.” “Dickensian” words are always a joy when they come out of suspended animation and breathe again, and for your reading pleasure, I have constructed a Victorian-style sentence, such as a Dickensian notary might have used, using the word. “Nefarious commissions expedited requiring minimal financial outlay.” Or, as AC/DC might have put it, “Dirty deeds done dirt cheap”.

God save the King!

The Union Jackal.

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