How much is that DOGE in the window?

I’ve no idea how to pronounce it, but I’m very excited by the potential implicit in DOGE. Maybe, like Fluffy in the Harry Potter movie, it can be lulled to sleep. I hope not, but only time will tell whether all the big money and vested interests will be enough to emasculate this program.

When Trump was first elected in 2016 I thought it was a disaster, a bit of a joke, a bit like getting Hannibal Lecter to provide school meals. As time went on I began to think of Trump as a refreshing change from ‘business as usual’. He was all the things many accused him of - full of himself, loud, boorish, self-aggrandizing and so on - but, by God, he was funny and he didn’t talk like any other politician. He seemed not to give a flying fornication about what others thought of him and just said what was on his mind.

It made me think about the question “what’s so good about the way we’ve been doing things up to now?”

Change for change’s sake is rarely a good thing and there has to be at least some good reason for implementing any change - otherwise you kind of get chaos. This is part of the problem with the program to “Queer” society which advocates for anything that is not ‘normal’. The normal is seen to be oppressive and bad. Unfortunately, the only real ‘benefit’ we’ve seen is an increase of people in public with artificial dog tails stuck up their arses.

Government, almost everywhere, has turned into some bloated monstrosity of corruption, ineptitude and waste. We can all see it much more clearly now - especially since The Great Cough of Calamity™.

What is necessary has become corrupted, either by corporate interests or ideology or both, and there are far too many functions of government which defy explanation - the kind of departments that are like the loon who brings flippers and snorkelling gear to the Sahara just in case there’s a flash flood.

Perhaps the most recent spectacular example of this was when the FDA in the US, a necessary government function designed to protect the interests of the population against ‘big business’ and the like, advocated on behalf of Pfizer when it wanted to keep important data hidden from public view for up to 75 years.

If this does not scream disgusting rank corruption to you, then nothing ever will.

It’s highly unlikely that this kind of thing is just a one-off, a kind of regrettable blip in the system. It is also undoubtedly a feature of the counterpart government institutions elsewhere, it just so happened to come to light in the US.

There has been a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth since the return of The Orange Dormammu™ and there’s even more now since Trump has announced some key positions. These are best understood in pictures, I feel.

Whatever one thinks of the specific choices made by Trump here, there’s no doubt they represent a completely different vision of the direction for America.

I mean, what was the guy on the bottom left supposed to be doing? Developing the next generation of lethal assault pronouns?

Now, it all could all go horribly wrong. But it could also go wonderfully right and we might see the emergence of a stripped-down leaner government that actually works for the people instead of itself.

If it’s the latter we can only hope it’s contagious because, Lord knows, we need it in the UK.

Charlotte Gill does a great job of detailing some of the utter lunacy and waste in the UK. Here’s just one example (of very many). It’s a research grant for £847,202 (which is over 1 million USD at current exchange rates). And what is this princely sum being used to fund?

“Communication and Creativity: An Arts-Based Study Focusing on Marginalised East African Communities in Kenya, Uganda and the United Kingdom”

Right. And what is this 3 year study going to produce?

Year 1 is a ‘research stage’ which basically will confirm all the pre-existing biases which are a feature of the research proposal.

Year 2 will “move into Action Research mode taking creative interventions to stakeholder groups identified in the research stage”.

Whoopee.

Year 3 is the real deal - “the focus will be on a major community performance production”

One million dollars for a community performance production. In East Africa.

Why? What the fuck are we doing spending UK taxpayer money on this blithering idiocy and useless shite?

The last paragraph of the ‘research’ proposal outlines why this is important (my emphases)

There is relatively little writing and research into problems of poor communication and how these impact on the lives of impoverished people in East Africa.

. . .

This research will seek first to understand, and then to work with participating communities on strategies to overcome such isolation, moving towards the obverse situation as we celebrate these lives through performance art and meaningful dialogue.

It’s instructive to put these kinds of costs into different units. How many taxpayers, each working 1 year, does it take to fund this cretinous garbage?

The median annual salary in the UK currently stands at £37,430 according to the Google thing. A handy online UK tax calculator tells me that the combined tax and NI (national insurance) contribution comes to £6,961 per year for this salary.

That means that 121 people in the UK (on median salary) have to work an entire year to fund this nonsense. That’s their entire contribution to the UK government coffers for a year (from their salary) being used to fund some wanky fucking performance art.

They’re not funding help for the disabled, or help for low-income mothers, or to keep pensioners warm this winter, or whatever else we might think we should be funding. No - it’s to fund some fucking performance art in East Africa.

And this is just one, one, such proposal that has been funded.

And that’s quite apart from the insane ‘net zero’ drivel from Ed Millibrain. Or the sickening levels of ‘climate reparations’ that seem to be being discussed at the moment.

Please President Trump - once they’ve DOGE’d the hell out of the US, can you send them over here?