Spain could soon become the first country in the world to give chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and other great apes some of the fundamental rights granted to human beings under a law being proposed by members of the ruling Socialist coalition.

The law would eliminate the concept of “ownership” for great apes, instead placing them under the “moral guardianship” of the state ...

From the Telegraph

OK, it’s a wonderfully loopy idea which every sane person will immediately dismiss, probably through tears of laughter.  But those of us with political memories that go back to the 1980’s have heard such objection before.  We laughed at political correctness.  It didn’t stop the ratchet turning:-

EMPLOYEES who send lewd jokes around the office by e-mail or text message could land their companies with unlimited compensation payments for sexual harassment.

New advice from the Equal Opportunities Commission states that even when an offensive e-mail is not sent directly to a colleague, but is circulated to others in the same workplace, it can constitute harassment. So too can viewing pornographic images on a computer screen next to a colleague who finds them offensive.

Unacceptable e-mail behaviour ranges from the more crude practice of circulating e-mails or text messages with pornographic attachments to the more insidious one of sending e-mails laden with sexual innuendo or commenting on a colleague’s appearance.

Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the commission, said that electronic sexual harassment was “a significant new issue” for employers. “At every stage, as technology has the potential to improve lives, it has the potential to have a negative impact in other ways. It would be quite possible for an offensive e-mail to be part of an environment that constituted sexual harassment,” she said.

Now, Jenny Watson is a good example of the left at work.  Professionally, she is a human rights “advisor”, which is no profession that I understand.  It seems to mean that she is a specialist in finding cosy, taxpayer-funded sinecures where government abuts industry.  But it is her directorship of the Lichstenstein-based Global Partners & Associates that really communicates the meaning of these engagements.

GPA appears from its website to be a normal company training organisation, publishing guides and videos, and running courses for managers and sales staff.  But the description on Jenny Watson’s bio states that GPA is, in fact, “an organisation which promotes democracy and human rights world wide: working on human rights projects in the UK, clients comprise public bodies and non-governmental organisations.”  Note that the claim isn’t that GPA promotes efficiency or success.  It promotes democracy and human rights.  If that’s what it does - and I assume Jenny wrote the bio herself - the GPA website goes to a lot of trouble to avoid saying this, presumably because its few fee-paying private sector customers would baulk at a Gramscian in their midst.

There are hundreds of Jenny Watsons in every Western country.  Step by step they coerce society towards the progressive paradise.  They are the foot soldiers, winning the war on the ground.  It’s not their purpose to dream up the next great stride towards freedom, be it for blacks in America or women at work or queers anywhere or trannies or even apes.  It’s not their purpose to get elected, and to listen to the Marxist dreamers and then, in time, unfailingly incorporate their dreams into law.  But the Jenny Watsons do enter into the revolutionary process next.  Theirs is the job of injecting the many strains of egalitarian virus into our commercial and cultural bloodstream.  They do it every day of their working lives.  It is their mission, their love, and we actually have to pay for the privilege.

I suppose that in our magically equal future some thoughtless knuckle-dragger who “harrasses” a female at work might be able to claim legal dispensation under the Monkey Law.  But short of that I’m afraid we are in trouble, and it’s no longer good enough to laugh at anything our political persecutors propose.