A Viscount Speaks

The Highlanders are rising!

What ho, proles!

Good news at last in this interminable election campaign!  My fellow Viscount, Lord Monckton, has thrown his hat into the ring in the Highlands.  He is standing on the UKIP ticket.  The Mad Monk is a formidable character and makes great sport of dishing beardie weirdie greens and tofu munchers.  If he's not beasting George Monbiot in Blighty, he's rallying the American masses on the Glenn Beck show.  What a fellow.  Hear his call:

The old discredited political parties understand little of our hard Highland life, and care less. And the numpties in Edinburgh's Parliament of Eunuchs have destroyed our wee bit hill and glen. Taxes and rates rise, public debt soars, but public services wither. Enough is enough. Is this the Brave New Scotland that Europe's SNP poodles maundered on about? Highlandmen, arise! Vote out the snivelling SNP satraps of the stifling European tyranny! Take back your nationhood and your democracy! Vote UKIP with pride!

That's the spirit, old bean!  Let's hope the Mad Monk raises an army of Highland savages to storm Westminster.  It would be quite something if the descendents of Wallace's men atoned for their forebear's treason by taking back Britain for the silent patriotic majority. 

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

The election is hotting up

What ho, voters!

I say, chaps, isn't this leaders debate malarkey frightfully exciting?  I anticipate something monstrous happening tonight.  I think old Scotch Gordon is finally going to go berserk and land one on Cameron on national television!  Some sort of Glaswegian kiss right on Cam's big pink moon face!  Golly, I hope so!

It's not all fun and games though.  I've had to lay down strict instructions that none of the below-the-stairs staff at Crouchback Castle be permitted to watch the event.  I had hoped that such a prohibition would not be necessary but regrettably several of the more bolshie servant girls have taken to exclaiming over that "nice Mr Clegg".  I can't sit down for supper without one of them prattling on about "ooh, he is very attractive, Jean, he'd get my vote!  I wouldn't mind being number 31 so I wouldn't!"

Of course, partly this is mere teasing since they know very well that I will be marching every last one of them into the polling station on 6th May and ordering them to mark their X - which doubles as their signature for most of them - next to Conservative.  However, I shall have to be rather more subtle this time since in 2005 I got into the most frightful lather when a local journalist spotted me leading my crocodile of servant girls into the polling station and promptly splashed a most outrageous headline over the front of his newspaper: "LOCAL TOFF ORDERS STAFF TO VOTE TORY: Viscount Crouchback threatens refuseniks with whip".

Absolute rot, of course.  I only whip the lads. The girls I prefer to rodger quietly in the wine cellar.  Nevertheless, I shall have to tread with caution this time. 

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

There lurks a thief in the night

What ho, proles!

I read with some amusement today's report that the Duke of Northumberland faces a challenge to his title from a delusional New Zealander (of all people). 

Kevin Percy, a former Olympic hockey player, who claims his ancestors include Harry “Hotspur” Percy who was immortalised in Shakespeare’s Henry V, claims that he is the rightful heir to the estate. He has written to the Queen to seek her support for the exhumation of the 5th Earl of Northumberland, who died in 1560, to see if the remains match his own DNA. Mr Percy said: “I’m 74 and I can think of nothing worse than going to my grave without knowing I’ve done my best for my family and our bloodline".

Well, naturally I had a good chuckle.  Poor old Ralph has been subjected to a torrent of similar challenges ever since making the foolish decision to permit Harry Potter to be filmed at Alwnick Castle.  I said to him at the time: "Ralph, I know you love films, but a prole is a prole is a prole - and artistic proles are proles nonetheless".  He didn't listen, of course, but I bet he wishes he had.   

My amusement did not last long, however, for it suddenly struck me that a fellow calling himself "Aucklander" has recently begun to frequent this blog.  I wonder whether Mr Kevin Percy is a fan of the blogs of noblemen?  Listen well, sir, for I shall say this only once: If you think you can strip me of my Viscountcy, then you can think again.  No colonial cur will ever turf me out of my Castle or pillage my possessions or assail my wife.  No, sir, not before you have embedded your sword into my belly and prised the keys to Crouchback Castle from my cold, dead hands. 

There will be no midnight hakas in the Castle courtyard while I still draw breath on this earth.  No Lady Crouchback will ever sport a tramp stamp and trakkie dags.  No, sir! Be away with you now, scoundrel.  Remove thy covetous eyes from this glorious corner of Sussex before I order my hounds to rip you from limb to limb.  Away, I say!  Away!

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

The shires are rising at last!

Warmest Monday greetings, dear readers!

I have kept my counsel on the Liz Truss affair.  Having boffed a few fillies during my time, I am loathe to criticise a chap or chapette for enjoying a spot of extra-marital hanky panky.  A good looking gel like Liz is perfectly entitled to a quick rogering from time to time.  However, I cannot help but sympathise with the local Norfolk Tories - the so-called Turnip Taliban - for jolly well sticking it to David Cameron and CCHQ.  I know from my own experience that the degree of central control exerted by the party hacks in London is quite extraordinary nowadays.  It has produced the intolerable situation whereby some of the most high-born noblemen in the shires are being bossed around by ghastly little grammar school oiks who believe that their 2:1 in PPE from a horrid little Oxford plebs' college like Pembroke or Lincoln is sufficient to bestow them with some gravitas.  It is not.  They were born oiks and they shall remain oiks no matter what ridiculous figure they claim for their IQ. 

CCHQ ought to consider who it is dealing with:

The elegant Stradsett Hall sits beside a lake of gently gliding swans. But the tranquillity of this 1,000 acre Norfolk estate could not be more deceptive.

For this is the home of Sir Jeremy Bagge, the self-appointed leader of a group of Tory rebels who are proving the most intractable enemy David Cameron has yet had to do battle with. 

And:

Trouble is, the Notting Hill lot have picked a fight with the wrong part of the world. This is rural Norfolk. Actually, given that the number of local landowners can be counted on the fingers of one hand, it's feudal Norfolk. 

I say!  These are my type of people!  Oh yes!  And consider what an eminently sensible fellow Sir Jeremy seems to be!

Sir Jeremy repeatedly says he has nothing against women.

"Sorry, no, I have never said I'm anti-women. I have got absolutely nothing against women.

"Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful three children appear? Women, you can't do without them. My god, take my wife."

What does she do for a living? "What does she do? She looks after me. Looks after the children. Runs the house." 

Quite so, sir!  Quite so!  Indeed, you give me great urge to have a jolly stern word with Lady Crouchback, who for decades has been shirking her duties and foisting them upon housekeepers and cooks at very great cost to the Crouchback trust fund.  I would go so far as to say that the indolent mare requires a damned good thrashing from the heavy end of a walking stick.

Good God, could it be?  Has the day of reckoning arrived?  After a century of horrendous proletarianisation, of Lloyd-George and Attlee and Blair and the steady erosion of aristocratic privilege, could it be that the shires are finally rising at last?  By jove, I think it could be!  I think the day is at hand!  I think the noble class has finally had enough!  I think I need only stretch out my fingertips for the ancient weal of nobless oblige to curl snugly into my hand once more!  Readers, I urge you to make haste to your nearest nobleman and petition his good favour.  I shall be forming a west Sussex militia this very week and I urge all yeomen of sturdy torso and sound mind to sign up immediately.

Yours, excitedly,

Viscount Crouchback

A storm is gathering

RUGGER MEN!

November is a poignant month.  Leaves die and drop from the trees, bright red poppies sprout on the lapels of City gents, and, like a Swiss clock chiming noon, the bronzed colonists of the Antipodes return to their mother country to take on England at Twickers.  It is a time that reminds us all of just how fortunate we are to be born into the freedom-loving British tradition. 

Our guests tomorrow, Australia, share this proud heritage.  Note the splendid Anglo names of the players: Robinson, Alexander, Elsom, Moore, Chisholm, Horwill and Ashley-Cooper (a distant relation of the 5th Earl of Shaftesbury).  Not an unreliable Irish name in sight!  Indeed, the Wallabies are a heart-warming throwback to a better, older Australia in which gentlemen of the Anglo persuasion ruled the roost and were not shy about upholding their right to do so.  They did not jabber on about Asia in those days; the original colonists knew jolly well whom their kith and kin were. 

So note the poppies that will be born on the tracksuits of several of the Australians tomorrow, and note their dignity whatever the outcome.  The quiet, modest tones of Moore and Giteau after their success at Twickers last year would have made Kipling himself purr with pleasure.  Note these things, and tip one's hat to the colonists.  One will not find a finer bunch of men anywhere outside England. 

But we must remember that England's opponents tomorrow are, after all, merely colonials.  They are ersatz Englishmen, but not real Englishmen.  They have courage and pluck, but not English courage and pluck.  They fought gallantly at Bloemfontein and Gallipoli, but they did not fight at Barnet or Bosworth Field or Marston Moor or Agincourt or Trafalgar or Waterloo.  They shed blood for the Empire in the Wars - and we honour them for it - but they did not shed blood at such a rate that an entire generation of public-school educated young men was wiped out; their sisters consigned to spinsterhood for the rest of their lives.  Most of all, the colonial has spirit, but he does not have the yeoman spirit.

The colonial is a frontiersman.  He is a sprightly, audacious soul.  He sets out to conquer, and he does it jolly well.  But Bruce of the Outback does not have the stubborn, redoubtable quality of John Bull.  Bruce, if he finds a spot of land too hostile, can move onto the next valley.  His land is immense; there is enough to gorge on.  No problem, mate.  The English yeoman is, by necessity, cut of very different cloth.  John Bull has no other valley to move on to.  This is it.  This valley, this acre, this plot of land is his life.  He must till it until the day he dies.  The buffeting of the seasons, the ravages of famine and war, the perils of sickness and disease: the yeoman cannot succumb.  He must cling to the soil, his soil, his precious English soil. 

Oh, do not be fooled by appearances.  John Bull is not a pretty beast.  He is not bronzed or lithe or athletic.  He cannot wrestle crocodiles or jump over kangaroos.  His belly is round because he sups English ale of a lunchtime.  His cheeks are rosy, his nails dirty, his bearing hunched and cautious to guard against the biting shire winds.  But what stubborness!  What perserverance!  Century follows upon century follows upon century and still the English shireman clings to his existence!  Still the name gets passed on down from generation to generation: Wilson, Thompson, Wilkinson.  Sons all of them - sons of fathers and sons of the shire soil.

Rejoice tomorrow, chaps.  Watch young Davey Wilson propel his monstrous bull neck into the first scrum, and rejoice that the English yeoman lives on.  Watch Wilkinson and Moody tackle like dervishes without the remotest concern for their own safety, and rejoice that the English yeoman lives on.  Watch the beef of big Jordan Crane; watch those thunder thighs scatter colonials in his wake; watch that voluptuous shire arse withstand contact; watch and rejoice that the English yeoman lives on! 

This is why we watch rugger.  Not for the momentary thrill of victory - enjoyable though it is - but for the stirrings in our ancestral memory that it provokes.  These are our people; this is our land; this is who we are.  England.  The Red Rose.  God Save the Queen.  

Yours, etc

Viscount Crouchback

The perils of the mass franchise (Part Two)

Serfs and Proles,

Several of you have raised interesting questions about the reintroduction of a property qualification to the franchise. Darwinia - South African filly with a penchant for golf - writes:

the vote to the super rich??? dont be silly. do you want beckham, "sir" alex ferguson and amy winehouse's vote. can they even make an X?

You raise a good point, my dear girl, but do please make an attempt to spruce up your typing in future.  At the very least I expect capitalised letters at the start of sentences.  Remember who you are conversing with, my dear: this is not some petit bourgeois Transvaal golf club full of crude Boer farmers knocking back kegs of brandy and coke; no, this is A Viscount Speaks, the world's only noble blog.  Hideous South Africanisms cannot and will not be tolerated in such a rarefied environment.   

Riki Tiki Tavi (I hope you're not a Maori, old fruit?  Horrid brutes.) raises a similar point:

The man has point. While we may frolick in your benign governance what the devil would you do about the oligarchs and the plebs. What chaos would 300 or so footballers cause? We may have to watch the X factor in perprtuity by gods. how would you control those jumped up oiks?

Quite so.  Quite, quite so.  You are absolutely right, my dear chap.  I had not considered the utter havoc that could be caused by nouveau riche barbarians being handed the vote in my future feudal utopia. 

I therefore add the following qualification: not only must one's estate be valued in excess of £500,000 (admittedly a rather trifling sum, but I do not wish to disenfranchise my drinking buddies at The Hare and Crown, most of whom have decidedly sound political views) but so too must the estate of one's father and grandfather.* 

This, at a stroke, removes from the franchise all those horrid little footballers and pop stars and other ghastly specimens who clawed their way out of the council estates by virtue (or rather by vice) of their mediocre talents being so disgustingly over-rated in this rude age.  

Blondy2 raises a different point:

And what about those upstart, bourgeoise civic builders, Crouchy? Where do they fit in? You know, the Cobdens and Brights of this world; the kind of fellas who started all this extended franchise malarky, and who ripped control of the new municipalities from you lot. It was the poor old Duke of Beaufort who copped-it down in my neck of the woods. The highest of High Tories he. A friend of yours, surely.

There will be no place for civic builders in my feudal utopia, old fruit. Indeed, all those ambitious types with a penchant for politics - the Jack Straws of this world - will be re-classified as builders.  Not civic builders.  Just builders**.  They will be set to work adding fortifications to Crouchback Castle to keep all the plebs out.  When they have finished those, I shall send them along to Lord Emsworth's estate to add a few fortifications there, too.  And when they have finished those, I shall set them to work building a bloody great wall along the middle of the country - say, from Worcester to Cambridge - to keep the northern barbarians from ever again descending upon the southern shires.  This wall will be named Crouchback's Wall, and will be visible from space. 

I trust that these alterations to the constitution of Crouchbackland meet with your hearty approval.

Yours, etc

Crouchback

* Exceptions will be granted to rugger players, ex-Guards, and those bona fide English yeomen who can trace their shire lineage back to (at least) the 13th century. 

** LIke Stalin, I believe that a spot of hard labour can be most rewarding for the silken-skinned intellectuals, do-gooders and pious liberals of this world.  I envisage a series of Gulags to the north of Crouchback's Wall. 

The perils of the mass franchise

Weekend greetings, dear readers!

Good Heavens, what a lot of fuss about Nick Griffin!  To think that such a peculiar little fellow could have the world's media at his fingertips.  He's a rum cove, no doubt - possibly the oddest-looking one-eyed politician since Gordon Brown. 

But I do wish that the chattering class bien pensants who have been so volubly expressing their outrage! at Griffin's sudden arrival on our television screens would reflect upon the fact that the BBC only extended the invitation because the BNP won one million votes; and they only won one million votes because millions of proletarians in northern slum towns are - for reasons that quite escape me - permitted to vote in British elections. 

Pray, why is the property qualification no longer extant?  It served Britannia most satisfactorily.  When only property owners could vote in this green and pleasant land, the electorate returned sublime specimens like Pitt, Disraeli, Gladstone, and Salisbury.  These men won wars and planted the Union Jack in the farthest corners of the globe.  But since any old pleb was permitted to mark an X next to their chosen candidate's name, we have had a ghastly litany of knaves, fools and wretches foisted upon us: MacDonald, Attlee, Heath, Wilson, Major, Blair, Brown.  What a shambolic collection!

The lesson is simple.  Her Majesty's Government must reintroduce the property qualification for the franchise: only owners of estates worth in excess of £500,000 should be permitted to vote in an election.  This would, at a stroke, solve sordid little problems like the BNP.  It would also ensure Conservative rule for perpetuity.  It might even enable the Tories to ditch the class traitor Cameron and to install instead an upstanding shire nobleman as Prime Minister - someone like, say, my dear son, Frederick Pelham Crouchback.

I beg my countrymen to return us to a simple, gentler age.  Let peasants plough; let proletarians manufacture; let squires debate; and let noblemen rule!

Yours, etc

Crouchback

I'm finished with those blasted Tories

Hallo, chums.

I am rather disappointed today.  I attended an event hosted by Daniel Hannan yesterday and was able to quiz him on his philosophy.  It wasn't quite as I had believed it to be...

Crouchback: "Mr Hannan, you believe strongly in localism, is that correct?"

Hannan: "Yes.  Absolutely".

C: "Power invested in the county and the diocese?"

H: "Absolutely!"

C: "Sturdy English yeomen as makers of their own destiny?"

H: "You've obviously read my book!"

C: "Presided over by benevolent, disinterested landowners who know how to keep the rabble in order?"

H: "Sorry?"

C: "Well, the oiks need guidance don't you think, old fruit?"

H: "No, no, no!  Such "guidance" is precisely what the oiks, as you so crudely put it, do not need! The oiks have had enough of being guided!"

C: "Come again?"

H: "The British people know perfectly well what is in their own interests.  They do not need others making decisions for them - we have had half a century of that and it hasn't worked".

C: "Well... <pause> ... <incoherent mumbling> ... But what about the traditional shire nobleman?  Surely there is a place for him in this grand scheme of yours?"

H: "He is perfectly entitled to his property".

C: "His property? Is that all?  But what about the peasants' taxes - who will collect them?"

H: "Well, the local council, naturally".

C: "Council?  Don't you think the local nobleman would be a more appropriate overseer of such matters?"

H: "If he is voted into such a position by the people, then yes; otherwise, no".

C: "Good Heavens, man.  You sound like a democrat!"

H: "I am a democrat!"

C: "I thought you were a conservative!"

H: "I am a conservative democrat!"

C: <shakes head vigorously> ... <mutters oaths>... <swishes at air with walking cane> ... "Well you don't strike me as one of the former, young man!  A democrat, assuredly; a conservative, no!"

So that's me finished with the Tories, chaps.  If even Hannan is unreliable, then I hold little hope for Cameron and Osborne.  Lord Emsworth has for some time been seeking to win my support for UKIP, but I find them a little too Saxon for my tastes.  So where the deuce does that leave me, I thought to myself. And then Smithson suddenly piped up.  "My Lord, I think I have the answer" he said.

"Oh yes?"

"There is a party that welcomes wealthy landowners with a traditional outlook on life.  Indeed, enormous wealth and a plummy voice seems to be a positive pre-requiste to join this crowd.  You would feel perfectly at home amongst them".

"Oh yes?  And do they like to keep the oiks down?"

"Oh yes, sir!  They do not like the oiks owning things.  It grieves them greatly to see a proletarian with a flatscreen television and a motor car".

"My God, Smithson, who are these people?  They sound wonderful!"

"My Lord, they are known as Greens.  I can furnish you with membership forms tomorrow".

And so there it is, chaps!  A Green I am soon to be!  One can always rely on Smithson!  Tally ho!

Crouchback

Three cheers for the Prince!

Fellow Subjects of Her Majesty,

How encouraging to see Prince Charles strike a blow for traditionalists by persuading the Qatari royal family to ditch the vulgar plans of Richard Rogers for Chelsea Barracks.  One newspaper columnist described the Prince's intervention as "feudal".  Well, quite!  And let's hope there's more where that came from!

Yours, etc
Viscount Crouchback

The Queen's territories in France

Dear Peers, Ladies, Gentlemen, Yeomen, Rotters, Cads, Bounders, Colonials, Foreigners, and Arabs,

Rupert Chumley-Worpingston asks:

"This all raises another hypothetical question. Were England to wage war on France to recoup land that still rightfully belongs to the Queen, what tactics would a division headed up by a Crouchback employ and which regions would look to annex? Personally I've always fancied taking some of Aquataine".

A marvellous question, my dear Chumley-Worpingston.  You are quite right, moreover, to stress that these territories "rightfully belong" to the Queen.  They do indeed.  Is it not remarkable that we have displayed such restraint towards France over the centuries?  We could have invaded the poor buggers at any point over the past 200 years, but have shown decency and generosity beyond measure by resiling from such a course of action.  Instead, the Germanic barbarians have flooded across the French border three times in the past 140 years without the remotest justification.  Nothing better illustrates the uniquely benvolent nature of the English yeoman.

But perhaps we have been too generous.  Our country is filling up.  We lack lebensraum.  And those ghastly Frogs have plenty of it.  I therefore recommend a swift invasion of Normandy, to be followed in due course by our chaps plonking themselves in Brittany.  It shouldn't be too difficult - we already have plenty of agents behind the lines operating under cover as retirees and restaurateurs, and dear old Freddie Frog has never been too keen on defending his turf. 

Once we have settled in nicely, I recommend we do as Richard the Lionheart did and use our newly expanded territories to raise an army to march on Jerusalem.  The Holy Land has lain rotting in the hands of Musselmen and Jews for far too long.  It is time we took it back, and I am assured privately that Prince Harry would be delighted to take on the job. 

Yours, etc
Viscount Crouchback