I have been meaning to sit down and watch an old film called “The Fountainhead” for a while now, but my wife get’s annoyed when I start waffling about Ayn Rand, so I keep deferring.

Anyway, the wife was out and my son was in, and we both like Rand and so the film was played…

Despite the fact that there are some famous and well known actors playing starring roles: Gary Cooper as Howard Roark, Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon and Raymond Massey as Gail Wynand, the whole shebang is a bit wooden, but the story is great, I confess that I have not read it.

As it progressed, I kept drawing analogous thoughts in my mind vis-à-vis
the current “phone hacking” story… Many of the characters are there:

Rupert Murdoch starring as Gail Wynand (though admittedly he had a fairly genteel upbringing compared to Wynand’s “Hells kitchen”), but obsessed with the ideas of making pots of money, gaining influence and possibly being a kingmaker… Ms. Wade/Brooks, and the Murdoch boys as various flavours of Peter Keating, Wade might also be linked to Francon for her tough, ruthless nature… Whether she turns out to be a heroine is yet to be seen, though unlikely.

As for Elsworth Toohey… Look no further than Cameron, Brown, and Blair at one time flatterers of the great Murdoch and at others dependent on him and his lackey’s and now conveniently forgetting any advantages that might have been bestowed on them by the great man as they (rather unfairly) rush to destroy him. Unfairly? He’s no worse than other’s of his ilk.

As for our hero, I cannot see a Roark anywhere in the current farce, although one might draw a few comparisons with Nigel Farage, who has been “banging on about Yerp” and the lack of political integrity for nearly twenty years now. He has had a number of successes but an equal number of defeats, but his primary message is more of a question… Where is honour and quality amongst the bankers, politicians and other meritocratic trades? However, he is far from being the steely stiff upper lip, more the brash horse-racing enthusiast, and more libertarian than objectivist, again as with others in this tale, we will have to wait and see.

…with their navel gazing stories of Rupert Murdoch’s press and the other useless organs, purporting to be news portals… The real business of completing the fascist takeover of this nation continues apace.

This in today’s Barclay Beano hints at the process…

http://tinyurl.com/64krtro

…but as is normal within these pages, comes to the wrong conclusion.

Your man Johnson asks whether we (the people) really want to look after our own affairs… But he uses Margaret Thatcher’s so-called privatisation scheme along with the current and latest iteration of Cameron’s “Big Society” as explained by Oliver “Leftwing” as backing for his argument that we are in fact not interested in having control of our own money back.

The reality is that genuine privatisation, where the government gets out of our way and returns to the only thing that we have ever given them a mandate to do… protecting us and our property interests… would lead to real prosperity for the people according to their talents and desire to succeed…

This was how it was in Victorian Britain, and this is how it is in modern China, both examples speak for themselves…

It means that utility companies can generate power in ways that make them profits and keep prices low, as opposed to the current mad ideas espoused by the odious Huhne (for whom piano wire is too good).

It means that we can choose the best school for our kids talents, rather than have them wasting the first quarter of their lives rotting in expensive “universities”.

It means that we look after our ill-helath in the way we think best, by keeping fit, not eating, smoking or drinking too much, but above all not getting stressed about the government thieves that pick our pockets and watch our every move.

Indeed in every area where government should not be poking its sticky beak, the same can be said.

And of course it will also solve one of the greatest problems facing these islands, the constant inward flow of immigrants…

If the freely handed out and extraordinarily expensive trinkets are not on offer, they won’t come unless they are determined to carve themselves a profitable niche.