Something significant has been bouncing around my brain (along with myriad other urgencies) for the last ten days: it’s the existence side by side of so many antithetical contemporary philosophies which, nevertheless, have shared adherents.

I posted on this yesterday in relation to Stockholm’s proud gays, but there is more to it than that. We have David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, who wants a level playing field – but a leg-up for his kids. We have Ed Miliband who wants to be ‘disgusted by ISIS atrocities’ in Iraq, but disabled in the eye department about Muslim sexual grooming in Britain. We have Leftist wimmin desperate to hurl ordure at Western men, but incapable of raising so much as a finger in defiance of rap’s inbuilt obscene misogyny.

In economics, you will find neoliberal fans of open markets and free trade desperate to have Rupert Murdoch’s children…Roop himself being the planet’s protectionist monopolist sans pareil. There are in turn Socialist opponents of privilege like Diana Abbott just gagging to send their kids to the sort of schools that perpetuate it. Here in France, there are many politicians who sing the praises of an EU with no trade barriers….but demand revisions to free trade when it comes to anything that threatens Marmande tomatoes, Agen prunes or Reims Champagne.

In Britain, one will find Nigel Farage – embracer of Britishness, sound beer and all things good for the Common Man – who nevertheless wants to strangle any and all Brussels rules in defence of that Man’s financial naivety. In Brussels itself, there exists the unelected Europresident Jean-Claude Juncker….a bloke who insists that “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it” – a man has never done anything useful in his entire drunken career….and indeed recently declared, “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” Well that’s alright then: do nothing, and when you get found out, tell fibs.

The truly odd thing that haunts me in all of this is the way that – while I would love to simply damn them all as self-interested shovers and makers – they dole out money to causes the rest of us wrote off as hopeless years ago. They want to forgive and forget.

Well, to forgive is divine; but if you’re in charge of the public purse, to forget is negligent.

The political class in the West suffers from two ills: cynical greed, and naive largesse.

It’d be nice if the two cancelled each other out, but they don’t: they take our money, pass it under the table to their mates in private….and award it to everyone from feckless fathers to faithless bankers in public. The private greed bankrolls their reelection campaigns, and the public largesse earns them the votes of the Sleeple recipients

The idea that there’s no alternative to this is risible. Bentham may be dead, but his ideas are still alive. The greatest fulfilment of the greatest number is still the aspiration we should all go for.

Per adua ad astra.