Human Slop

So, first of all it was to pay for his security, now it is a 'reward' for campaigning for Brexit.  Come on Nige, just tell us, once and for all, what was it really for?  I refer, of course, to that five million quid that was surreptitiously slipped to Nigel Farage in used fivers inside a crumpled brown envelope, in a deserted multi-storey car park at midnight, by some shady non-dom tech billionaire.  But at least we've established that it didn't pay for that house he bought in 2024 - that was apparently paid for with his fee from appearing in that reality TV show.  Mind you, we still haven't had any explanation as to how his girlfriend - that French fascist bird - was able to pay for that other house in Clacton-on-Sea, despite apparently not having any funds.  Obviously, the fact that she is being investigated by the EU over fraud allegations has nothing to do with it.  Just sayin'.  (As the fascist kiddies like to say on social media every time they post yet more defamatory misinformation).  But hey, Nigel Farage and his dodgy financial dealings aren't what I want to talk about today.  I actually want to talk about 'slop'.  Because, you know, I hear a lot of whining about 'AI slop', particularly on social media, amongst the would-be artistic types who use the alleged prevalence of AI generated content for their own lack of success, but the reality is that, particularly on You Tube, I encounter a lot of non-AI, human generated slop.  Some of it actually quite sinister.  You know the sort of stuff I mean: those videos, framed as nostalgia, going on about how much better Britain was way-back-when and how we need to get back to those good old fashioned conservative values.  The right-wing propaganda undertones should be obvious to a blind, deaf and dumb person it is so blatant.

Because this 'golden age' they all hark back to is inevitably portrayed as some soft-focus vision of a middle England predominantly populated by nice, middle class, people.  It's a world where the working classes know their place and immigrants are rightfully grateful for the opportunities afforded them by being generously allowed to tread foot on our hallowed shores.  It's all utter bollocks, of course.  But it's a pretty standard right-wing tactic - the creation of a fake past that has supposedly been corrupted by socialism, the welfare state, immigrants, single mothers or whatever, despite the fact that it never existed.  They juxtapose it with an equally distorted version of current reality - that civilisation is on the brink of collapse and that we're all going to be murdered in our beds by foreign criminal, out-of-control juvenile delinquents, militant drag queens or mad Islamic fundamentalist bastards.  Again, all utter bollocks.  I've heard all before over the past few decades - the tune remains the same, only the musicians and the medium of delivery change.  Anyway, what set me off on this particular journey of ranting was one of these videos which popped up my You Tube homepage, promising to tell me why people were so much happier in the 1970s.  Now, I lived through the seventies, it was the decade I grew up in  and I can assure you that people were no happier then than they are now.  In fact, I recall much of the seventies being utterly miserable, characterised by lengthy industrial disputes which resulted in power cuts, refuse not being collected, transport grinding to a halt and so on.  On top of that, OPEC ensured that oil prices soared, resulting in fuel rationing.  Inflation was rampant, unemployment rising.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, some things never change, do they?

But let's humour these bozos and pretend that people were happier then - why might that have been?  Well, maybe it was down to the fact that, despite all the problems and industrial disputes, we still had extensive and functioning public services.  Perhaps it was because, back then, if you had the misfortune to have to claim benefits, you weren't treated like a criminal.  Then again, maybe it was because we still had the prospect of full employment, although Thatcher, when she arrived in 1979, put paid to that. Our utilities and key industries hadn't been sold off to offshore investors who took their profits away from the UK - something else Thatcher put paid to.  But I can guarantee that the video in question didn't say any of those things, (I can't say for sure, because I didn't bother watching it, but I'm pretty damned confident based upon past experience), instead it no doubt harped on about some mythical golden age of 'community values' and low crime, ('you could go out and leave your doors unlocked' - I never knew anyone do this, if they did, it was only because they were so poor they had nothing worth stealing).  Doubtless, this all ended because of immigration, too much liberalism, the end of corporal punishment in schools, etc.  Ignoring the reality that any 'community values' were based around the post-war settlement and the creation of the welfare state - something that the sort of politicians those who make these videos destroyed.  If people are nostalgic for the seventies it was because, thanks to Keynsian economics and the welfare state, living standards had improved and people across society were, in general, better off than they had ever been before.  So, yeah, to get back to the point - human, or rather quasi-fascist, generated slop.