Titanic Britain by Joe Cater ISBN 978 153 932 3259

Unlike some of this book’s critics on the Left, I have actually purchased it and read it. It is authored by a fascinating man by the name of Joe Cater, a businessman who lives and operates on the South Coast of England. For those who do not know Mr Cater, as well as being an author, he is someone whom I’ve become acquainted with through social media. His background in geology, science and business is put to very good use on platforms like Gab and Parler where he challenges, with stiletto wit and knowledge, those with seriously out there ideas.

Mr Cater is wildly entertaining when he challenges the idiotic pronouncements of lunatics, such as those put forth by the Flat Earthers, creationists and the neo-Nazis who believe that there are malevolent Jews hiding under their beds. Sometimes Mr Cater’s social media feeds look like some sort of ‘Fraggle Farm’ as there are so many lunatics he’s challenging at one time, but the Flat Earth and neo-Nazi livestock on his Fraggle Farm are going on only one journey and that is to the intellectual slaughterhouse.

But, let’s concentrate on Mr Cater’s book, ‘Titanic Britain’. The premise of this book, which was published in 2016 and prior to the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, is that there has been an evisceration of common sense and practicality in Britain and it is the liberal Left who are behind it. Mr Cater puts the blame for many of society’s ills on the middle class Left, such ills as the creation of welfare funded underclasses, individuals with no sense of self control or responsibility, an education system not fit for purpose and the sort of multiculturalism that has not brought different people together but has merely siloised them in ghettos. He also has a go at the woefully misnamed ‘Religion of Peace’ and asks some awkward questions of it of a sort that Islamic scholars and Islam’s collaborationist apologists really wouldn’t want to answer.

As I said earlier in this piece, I have actually read this book, unlike many on the Left who didn’t read it but who just left fake negative reviews on Amazon about it. I cannot say that I agree with every single word in it as I’ve never yet come across a factual book that didn’t make me ask questions about the author’s ideas. However what I can say it is a book with a lot of truths in it about how Britain has gone from a land where we stood alone against the Nazis until America’s entry into World War II, to a land where there are a lot of people who are ‘offended’ by mere words, ridiculously self entitled and who are quite frankly weak snowflakes.

The book opens with a quite entertaining introduction and proceeds to the first chapter of ‘gridlocked Britain’. This is on the subject of transport in the UK. There is some stuff that I agree with and others that I do not. Where I agree with Mr Cater is with his opinion that Britain’s drivers have been short changed and used as cashcows by successive governments with money from road and fuel taxation not being spent on the national road infrastructure. Where I disagree with Mr Cater is on the subject of elderly drivers. There are a lot of elderly drivers where I live in the Midlands and I do not recognise Mr Cater’s description of them as a menace. At least these elderly drivers follow the rules of the road, unlike so many of the younger drivers who seem to have two speeds, foot down and stop. Also my late father drove HGV’s from the late 1950’s through to the early 21^st century when he was in his early 70’s and was perfectly safe as a driver. Not all older drivers are bad drivers and I feel that Mr Cater’s criticisms of older drivers may be due to his experience of driving around Eastbourne. This town has a lot of retirees so much so that many years ago this distinctive Eastbourne demographic spawned a joke from observers that you have to go to ‘Harwich for the continent, Eastbourne for the incontinent’.

Moving on to Mr Cater’s assessment of education and it is here where this author absolutely hits the nail on the head. There has been a dissolution in Britain’s education system and this has been to the detriment of both the individuals who have gone through this system and to the nation as a whole. He is absolutely correct when he says that a lack of selection, whether at 11 or at another suitable age has failed children of a variety of different intelligence levels. Comprehensive education and ‘all ability’ teaching has meant that bright kids don’t get the education they deserve and the less bright kids are stuck in schools and teaching systems where they fall behind, do not get the help they need and out of frustration end up as the classroom disruptors. I believe as Mr Cater does that the comprehensive system has been an absolute failure. There is a need for academic vigour to return to Britain’s schools but as Mr Cater points out and is a point on which I whole-heartedly agree, any return to vigour will be resisted by the teaching unions and the left dominated educational establishment. To bring out the reinvigoration of Britain’s educational sector will take a lot of effort as even Margaret Thatcher’s government ended up bamboozled and outwitted by the communists in the educational establishment. However, as someone who had to live through and be educated in a system dominated the the worst excesses of liberal – left Plowdenism when I was at school, I have to say that Mr Cater has diagnosed accurately many of the problems that afflict Britain’s education system. What’s more he lays the blame fairly and squarely where it deserves to be, with the Left.

Other chapters in the book on welfare, poverty, the obesity ‘crisis’, migration and criminal justice are all dealt with in detail. Mr Cater looks carefully at what has changed over a fifty year period and how much has been lost that is good. Things like self reliance, responsibility and a mostly heterogeneous society are greatly reduced these days and as Mr Cater shows, it is mostly the Left who can be blamed for this reduction in virtue and a growth of social and personal vices.

His chapter on Islam is absolutely bang on. Mr Cater examines the Koran and even though he is an atheist compares it unfavourably with the Bible and the Christian Testament. He draws very accurate comparisons between the violence and hatred encouraged by the writings in the Koran and the Hadith and the pacifism that is to be found in the Christian Testament and the foundations for good societal governance that can be found in the Tanakh aka the Old Testament. He busts apart the lie that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’ by asking this question: “If Islam is a religion of peace then why are its extremists not peaceful?” Mr Cater also takes aim, quite rightly in my view on the subject of the nonsense word ‘Islamophobia’. He notes that the use of this word did not become common in the West until Muslims attacked the West with the 9/11 attacks. He also notes that there is no need for words such as Buddhaphobia or Christiophobia or Judeaophobia, because those faiths are not in general so violent and obnoxious that they need shielding with nonsense words such as ‘Islamophobia’.

Mr Cater is not, as many of the Left try to smear him as, ‘far right’, he’s just a normal small ‘c’ conservative and his arguments as to what has gone wrong are difficult for the Left to refute. He’s also, in my view and I don’t think that he will thank me for saying so, a bit of an old style liberal in the proper live and let live sense of the word. I say that because in general Mr Cater is tolerant of the lifestyle choices of individuals provided that these lifestyle choices are not pushed unwanted in his face and that he and other Britons are not forced to pay for such choices. This to me is a very reasonable point of view and shines out in his chapter on gay Britain. Mr Cater expressly states that he has gay friends and colleagues and who they are attracted to and what they do in the bedroom is none of his business. However he does take issue with the militant LBGT activists who are the ones who are behind much of the harassment of those who quite rightly should express their disagreement with the gay lifestyle and who are pushing age inappropriate gay propaganda in Britain’s schools. I believe that Mr Cater’s view which is that the individual is entitled to live their best life is correct and unlike the views of gay activists, is one shared by the majority of Britons.

To conclude this review, this book gets a great deal correct when it comes to assigning blame for the decline of good social values in the United Kingdom. I may disagree with it in parts or wonder how a repair policy may be implemented, but Mr Cater gets the diagnosis correct. The liberal left,or more particularly in my view the middle class liberal left, have done a great deal of damage to this country and it is damage that needs to be repaired. This is a book that many who want to know where Britain went wrong should read and it is a book I would recommend. It is both thoroughly informative and entertaining. You can find it in all good online and real life bookshops and hopefully in public libraries. Please quote the ISBN reference at the head of this article if you have any difficulty finding it.