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JUST STOP
Of all my blog posts, I don’t think that any has had the topical immediacy of today’s. Yet again, I am moved to write about the ongoing test series between England and Australia, but sadly, for the wrong reason.
This morning, those who care about such things were excited by the resumption of hostilities after the thrilling finale of the first test. Would the Australians consolidate their grip on the ashes, or would the English enjoy a rare victory against the “old enemy” at Lord’s? Those who consider cricket history might well have been wondering which players on either side would have their names engraved on one of the honours boards after the conclusion of the match, or whether a streaker would enliven a somnolent passage of play, as happened in 1975.
The incident of the streaker did provide some humour. The exhibitionist in question was a merchant seaman who claimed he had done the deed for a bet. For those of you who don’t know, he ran onto the field, hurdled the stumps, and was then, to quote the legendary cricket commentator, John Arlott, “embraced by a blonde policeman”. This in turn inspired a listener to the BBC’s Test Match Special to compose a limerick.
“He ran on in his birthday attire,
And set all the ladies afire.
When he came to the stumps,
He misjudged his jumps,
Now he sings in the Luton Girls Choir.”
This morning’s incident, however, was not so humorous. Two men and a woman, wearing Just Stop Oil t-shirts ran from the grandstand onto the field, with the intention of making a mess with that organisation’s trademark orange powder. The woman was apprehended before getting onto the field. The England captain, Ben Stokes, and the Australian opening batsman, David Warner, intercepted one of the hooligans, and handed him to security staff. The other ne’er-do-well was halted by the England wicket keeper, Jonny Bairstow, who carried him to the boundary before the police took over. Play was unable to resume for a further six minutes while ground staff swept up the orange powder, and Bairstow, whose whites were covered in the stuff, went to change
Thankfully, no harm came to anyone. That said, these ridiculous stunts are harming the cause those who perform them claim to support.
In April, the world snooker championship was disrupted, as was the final of the rugby union premiership last month. Just Stop Oil protesters have blocked roads, thus preventing people from getting to work, taking their children to school, and unforgivably, stopping people getting to hospital appointments. These bullying tactics have been learnt from their cousins Extinction Rebellion. Although the latter group seems to be having a rethink.
Their defenders liken them to the suffragettes. They argue that taking direct action was what gave women the vote. This is incorrect. Doing the work of men, while the men were away fighting the first world war, did more to persuade opponents of women’s suffrage such as David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill to change their minds than all of the direct action.
But far from making the populous join them in demanding immediate change, it is alienating people. During a cost of living crisis, no-one wants to be prevented from earning a living. It’s bad enough that the pandemic and industrial action have played merry hell with children’s education, without the mob doing its bit. And hospital appointments are rarer than unicorns, so nobody should be wilfully delayed in the attempt to make use of them. Equally, given the expense nowadays of attending sporting fixtures, it is unfair to disrupt people’s pleasure.
Engaging with governments and big business would be a far more productive way of getting what they want. Holding up traffic – an eccentric way of bringing about a reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels – throwing tomato soup over priceless works of art, screaming at the King – a man who has done more than most to raise awareness of the climate emergency – and creating disturbances at sporting events are at best stupid. Punishments should be severe.
The freedom to peacefully protest is a wonderful thing, and it is right that such a freedom is enshrined in law. But freedom to protest does not mean freedom to prevent others going about their business. Just Stop Oil should, quite frankly, just stop.
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Criticism Is Just Not Cricket
If you ask any English cricket fan to name his or her top ten test matches, they will almost certainly name a goodly number of English victories over Australia. Their list would probably include “Botham’s match”, played at Headingley in 1981, England’s victory by three runs at Melbourne in 1982-83, their two-run thriller at Edgbaston in 2005, and Ben stokes’ triumph, also played at Headingley, in 2019. They might also consider England’s two-wicket win over the West Indies at Lord’s in 2000, the only match to date in which all four innings featured in a single day, or the match in Karachi later that year, when Graham Thorpe hit the winning runs, almost in the dark.
One wouldn’t argue with a fan picking any or all of those six matches. They were all fabulous games of cricket, which could have gone either way.
But would they consider the test match which has just concluded at Edgbaston? One suspects that they would not, although, quite frankly, they should.
We have just been treated to five days of incredible cricket. Five absorbing days when Fortune’s tide ebbed and flowed for both teams. Five days of disciplined bowling, exhilarating batting, disciplined fielding, fascinating captaincy, poor judgment, and missed chances. Five days in which twenty-two men had their characters, mental resilience, and physical stamina well and truly tested. The Australians were victorious, but only just. It was certainly a disappointment for the England players and their supporters, but what a wonderful contest.
People have been unfairly critical of the England captain, Ben Stokes and his so-called “Bazball” tactics. They forget that since he assumed the captaincy last year, that England have won eleven of the fourteen test matches they’ve played. Its has been exciting stuff, even if it hasn’t always come off for the English.
Not only cricket fans, but followers of all sports, need to recognise that although the enjoyment of triumphs is a wonderful thing, the acceptance of disasters is necessary. If you can’t bare the pain of your team being beaten, how can you properly enjoy its victories? This is something I had to come to terms with a long time ago, as a supporter of Worcestershire County Cricket Club. Their most glorious years, during my boyhood, are long gone. They might return one day. In the meantime, I shall have to enjoy any victories that occur, and just as importantly, any good matches, regardless of the result.
But back to international cricket. There are another four tests to go in this, the latest battle for the Ashes. That’s a maximum of twenty days. If those twenty days of Anglo-Australian cricket are as absorbing as the previous five, we will truly have been treated to a wonderful contest. Do I want England to win back the Ashes? Of course I do. And the English should play the way they have been for the last year. It might come off. And if it doesn’t, the Australians must know that they have been in a proper contest. If the men wearing the Baggy Green want to retain the Ashes, the men wearing the three lions should force them to earn the urn. And of course, vice versa.
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“Down With Oxfam”
In 1968, the author John Braine published his novel, The Crying Game. It is a satirical view of London in the “swinging 60s”, as seen through the eyes of Frank Batcombe, a young, Conservative journalist.
One of our hero’s housemates is an eccentric character named Basil. One of the most memorable things about him, is his regular greeting to all and Sundry, “down with Oxfam”. Were he real, and living today, he might give that greeting with considerably more feeling.
The Oxford Committee for Famine Relief was formed on 5th October 1942, and was made up of prominent local quakers, and university academics. The aim of the committee was to provide food for the people of Greece. At that time, Greece was subject both to occupation by German and Italian forces, and an allied naval blockade. The committee wished to persuade the British government to allow food shipments to be made.
Over the next few years, the committee evolved into one of the most innovative, and for a time the largest, charity in the UK. It also officially abbreviated its somewhat cumbersome name, making use of its telegraphic address, and became “Oxfam”.
The first overseas committee of Oxfam was established in Canada in 1963. Subsequently, more such committees appeared, all operating under what we would now call the Oxfam brand. In 1995, twenty-one such organisations formed a confederation, Oxfam International. It’s aim is to relieve poverty and promote equality.
So far, so laudable. But then the scandals came along.
Over the last few years, a number of allegations of sexual misconduct, bullying and intimidation, both in Oxfam’s shops, and in areas of charitable operations, have been made. An internal enquiry revealed a culture of impunity among members of staff in Haiti, as well as the admission from the charity’s Belgian country director, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, that he had used the services of prostitutes in a villa rented with charitable funds. Van Hauwermeiren was prevailed on to resign, by the then CEO, Dame Barbara Stocking, because it would give him more dignity, and prevent any reputational damage for Oxfam.
In June 2021, The Daily Telegraph reported the leaking of training documents for Oxfam staff. These documents claimed that “privileged white women and mainstream feminism” supported the route causes of sexual violence, because they were wanting “bad men” to lose their jobs or be imprisoned. They also, bizarrely, claimed that reporting sexual assaults, “legitimises criminal punishment, harming black and other marginalised people”. Louise Perry of The New Statesman has said that the documents “might well make pleasant reading for rapists”, and has suggested that Oxfam was appealing to identity politics and “woke” ideology in order to try and “extricate itself from the shame of its ongoing failure”.
And now, we have the Pride Month video. An animated video was posted on the internet, which contained what was believed to be a caricature of the novelist JK Rowling, wearing a badge labeled “TERF”. For those who may not be aware, permit me to explain that “TERF” is a derogatory acronym standing for “trans exclusionary radicle feminist”. The trans lobby asserts that Rowling is such a person, because she accepts immutable biological facts, rather than subscribing to certain current social mores. It was also reported in The Times, that a worker from one of Oxfam’s UK shops was dismissed, because she argued that there was no reason not to sell Rowling’s books if they were donated.
If people bothered to read what she has written on the subject, they would know that JK Rowling is not remotely transphobic. Oxfam’s advertising people should never have countenanced thinly veiled, ad hominem attacks. If they really want to make a statement regarding the rights of LGBT people, they would do better to lobby the government of Uganda, which has recently passed a law allowing for the execution of gay people, simply for being gay. That is a real attack on human rights. Holding what some might consider a heterodox view on trans rights, is not.
All of this means that Oxfam is losing vast amounts of support, both financial and voluntary. Given the above, this is hardly surprising. If an organisation alienates people, why should they fund or work for it?
Oxfam must get its house in order when it comes to sexual misconduct. It must also cease all bullying and intimidation, including its absurd interventions in identity politics. If it does not, I might find myself echoing my fictional namesake.
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The Government Should Play Our Cards Right
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, gave a speech in Dover. His subject, at least officially, was legal immigration. In reality, he seemed to be conducting an experiment, in order to find out how many times he could say “small boats”, before people either told him to shut up, or punched him in the face. His speech was litter with those two words, as was every answer he gave to every question he was asked.
Part of his fixation with diminutive marine craft, is the need to placate the right wing of his party – those people who insist that Johnny Foreigner is coming to steal both our jobs and our welfare benefits. But rather than join in with demonising people, Mr Sunak could resurrect a seventeen-year-old act of Parliament. If he were to reintroduce the National identity Card scheme, a law could be passed to make it illegal to work with out one. Right-wingers would be pleased about that, and sensible people would be pleased by the other benefits of ID cards.
Permit me, dear reader, to remind you of the salient facts. In 2003, the then Home Secretary, David Blunkett, proved that nobody is wrong all of the time, when he announced that the Government would, subject to Parliament’s approval, introduce national identity cards. Parliament duly obliged, and the National Identity Cards Act was signed into law in 2006. However, partly for reasons of pleasing naysayers, and partly to save money, the coalition government of 2010-15 repealed it in 2011.
This idea had originally been proposed by Blunkett in 2001, in the wake of the September 11th attacks. He believed that a compulsory ID card for all would reduce the likelihood of further terrorist atrocities. His cabinet colleagues didn’t share this view, so rejected the idea. But as 2002 went by, worries about benefit fraud and similar offences increased. Eventually, the Government returned to the idea of some form of ID card. Finally in 2003, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, had Blunkett make the announcement.
In order to make it sound less sinister, the Government referred to “National Entitlement Cards”. However, as everyone insisted on calling them “Identity Cards”, the euphemism was dropped. But the Government’s sales technique didn’t improve. Time and time again, ministers appeared on radio and television, insisting that these little cards were a panacea, which would rid us of the twin plagues of crime and terrorism for all time.
Opponents of the scheme would howl about the immediate destruction of civil liberties. Rather than saving Mankind, or at least the British part of it, ID cards would enslave us all. Big Brother would, indeed, be watching us, just as George Orwell had predicted. Ironic really, given the facts that Orwell’s real surname was Blair, and the British public was obsessed with watching the voyeuristic television programme, Big Brother.
Even after the scheme became law, the acrimony surrounding it continued. The Conservative MP, and future Brexit Secretary, David Davis, went so far as to trigger a by-election on the issue, which he duly won.
Eventually, the civil libertarians and the economists brought about the end of the project. The Cameron/Clegg coalition repealed the act, and that was that.
We should all have identity cards. But the Blair Government was wrong to fixate on the prevention of terrorism. They wouldn’t have helped, and to claim otherwise is fatuous. Citizens of those countries who have a similar scheme but have still suffered from terrorist attacks will tel you that. However, they would have helped, and would still help, to speed up many needlessly long-winded processes, such as: benefit claims, criminal record checks, the finding of health records, the finding of tax records, reference checks for moving house, opening bank accounts, and a whole host of other things. So many organisations require photo ID, or proof of age. But blind people, for obvious reasons, aren’t issued with driving licences, and most people are, quite understandably, reluctant to carry their passports around with them, assuming that they even have one, and no-one with any sense would be carrying their birth certificate around with them.
As I said earlier, it could be made illegal to employ someone who doesn’t have either a National Identity Card, or in the case of an immigrant, an appropriate visa in their passport, granting them the right to work in the UK. This would help to reduce opportunities for people smugglers, as well as possibly silencing the Daily Mail’s less intelligent readers.
Those who belly-ache about the State intruding into our lives don’t convince me. The louder they shout about “Big Brother”, the more one wonders what they have to hide?
Some people suggest that we should have digital ID cards on hour smart phones. I’m not sure that I’d go that far. At least, not yet. I wouldn’t be comfortable with the idea of making those people who don’t want, or can’t use, smart phones have them. Although, the Estonians have made a great success of going almost completely digital, so it might be worth the Government finding out how they did it.
As I have said, a whole host of processes could, and almost certainly would, take less time if all of the relevant information were in one place. It happens in other countries, so there’s no need for it not to happen here. Perhaps the British government should realise that exceptionalism is foolish, and admit that maybe, just maybe, instant of vilifying him, we should accept that from time to time, Johnny Foreigner might actually be able to teach us a thing or two?
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The People Are Being Conned
In 1972, the record-buying public made Johnny Nash’s song, There Are More Questions Than Answers, a big hit. The song always pops into my mind when discussions of electric cars take place.
The latest aspect of that discussion, is the lack of public charging points for these horrors. In the north west of England, owners of electric vehicles are getting particularly grumpy, as queues to charge them are ridiculously long. There is, apparently, only one charging point for every eighty-five electric cars, whereas in London, there is one charging point for every eleven such vehicles.
Despite having a degree of sympathy with the view that if things are going well in London, nobody seems to care about the rest of the UK, I have no sympathy for those who are unable to find charging points for their vehicles. They were foolish enough to let themselves be gulled into parting with inordinate sums of money, so they must learn the full extent of their errors.
There are two arguments in favour of electric vehicles. Both of them are false.
Firstly, they are quiet, which has to be better than those permanently noisy internal combustion engines. Nonsense. Yes, they are very quiet, but that poses a significant health and safety risk. If an approaching car is silent, it necessarily follows that only those who can see it coming will be aware of it. This means that blind and partially sighted people, as well as the careless, risk life and limb whenever they cross a road. One could argue that the careless only have themselves to blame, but their carelessness could prove harmful to the driver, not to mention any passengers. There is a legal requirement for electric vehicles to have the facility to produce a continuous sound, but absurdly, there is no requirement that it should be used.
The second argument is that they reduce environmental damage. Again, this is utter nonsense. On the face of it, they do, as there is no smelly exhaust. However, there are numerous other considerations. And it is here that we must return to Johnny Nash’s point. Here are just a few questions.
How is strip-mining the world’s lithium for car batteries, most of which is either under rainforests or mountains, any better for the environment than drilling for oil? Batteries have a limited lifespan, so how are they to be disposed of safely? What materials are to be used instead of plastics, which are made from oil? If every vehicle is to be electric by the middle of the next decade, how will all of the additional electricity be generated? Who is to pay for the necessary upgrades to the existing electrical infrastructure? Must people be killed by silent cars before sound production at all times becomes mandatory? If so, how many? Given the fact that these vehicles are controlled, at least in part, by phone apps, do we really want to risk cyber car crimes? How can the same people who condemn our forefathers for exploiting peoples and places in the name of the onward march of Western civilisation, justify the continued exploitation of those same peoples and places in the name of “clean” cars?
The song is right. There are, indeed, more questions than answers. In fact, neither I nor anyone I’ve heard of have received many answers. And those that have been offered have been fatuous. Electric vehicles are simply an expensive form of virtue signalling. But the virtue is nothing more tangible than an illusion.
Having hybrid vehicles makes a degree of sense. As does the use of hydrogen as a fuel. But using these overpriced, overgrown children’s toys does not. They are nothing but a lucrative way of fleecing the gullible.
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Manners Makyth Man, Woman, Child … and Geriatric
Manners, we are told, are deplorably lacking in the young. Perhaps it has always been, or always thought to have been, the case. One imagines that William of Wykeham, one-time Bishop of Winchester, and twice Chancellor of England, might have thought so. After all, not only did he establish two prestigious seats of learning – New College, Oxford, in 1379, and Winchester College in 1382 – but he bestowed upon them his motto, “manners makyth man”. The two institutions were clearly meant to turn out both scholars and gentlemen.
To be fair to their detractors, young people do seem unable to hold a conversation without constantly checking their phones. “We wouldn’t have behaved like that in our day,” older people insist. Hmm. As the technology didn’t exist then, that’s something we shall never know.
However, according to that great scientific body of empirical research that is my personal experience, young people seem to have far better manners than their seniors. I have never been grabbed by young people and told I am going the wrong way, even though they have no idea where I’m actually intending to go. I have never heard young people tutting and swearing at me for having the nerve to ask if I might be permitted to pass them. No young person has shouted to me through a car window, informing me that I’m a “stupid, blind c**t”, because my cane has come into contact with their vehicle”. I’ve never witnessed young people impatiently snapping their fingers at waiters and waitresses to demand that they hurry up and get a glass of water which was ordered twenty seconds before. The middle-aged and elderly are, unfortunately, rather frequently guilty of these things.
Of course there are rude, obnoxious youngsters. And of course, there are older people for whom bad manners are anathema. But good manners seem to deteriorate with age.
Why should this be? One possible reason is that it’s a reaction to the pandemic. People have, as a result of the various lock-downs, forgotten how to behave around their fellows. I’m not convinced by this, though. Partly because the pandemic has become an easy scapegoat for anything people find disagreeable, and partly because I think it was happening before then. As I said, this great piece of research is entirely based on my own experiences and observations. Well, that methodology was good enough for Freud, so who am I to admit to its deficiencies?
I think that older people have acquired what they deplore in the young – a sense of entitlement. The old believe that the young hold the view that life’s glittering prizes are theirs as of right. And perhaps there is some truth in that perception. Although, to be fair to the young, this sense was nurtured by older people, until it became ingrained. Then it became something to sneer at.
But the old, in their turn, believe that they are entitled to automatic respect at all times, regardless of their own behaviour. This attitude is, of course, nonsense. Were we not all taught that respect should be earned? Longevity, therefore, isn’t, and shouldn’t be, the only criterion for respect.
So, what is the answer? Should we prove our social superiority by resolute politeness to those who are rude to us? Turn the other cheek to cheek, if you will. Or should we fight fire with fire, and give an ill-mannered response to a lack of manners? The latter is certainly tempting. But if the middle-aged and the old wish the young to display better manners, they should lead by example.
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Life Stinks
Is the sense of smell not a wonderful thing? The pleasure of the scents of flowers, or freshly baked bread, or good coffee, or hay, or the sea, or spices, or the ecclesiastical combination of incense and beeswax candles, is indescribable. A smell can also evoke other times and places.
Seven or eight years ago, I had a lot to do with a lady who habitually wore a fabulously luxurious perfume. As she was the only person in the place where we met who wore it, I could always identify her before she spoke. A pleasure usually unavailable to blind people. On one occasion, however, she had about her a different fragrance, a heady combination of sun, heat and aromatic oils. I can’t adequately describe it, but it transported me about two-and-a-half thousand miles away, and ten years or so back, to a perfumery in Luxor, which my ex wife and I had visited.
To the lady’s surprise, I greeted her by name, as usual. She asked how I knew it was her, given the fact that she hadn’t used her normal perfume. “Simple,” said I, in the manner of a latter-day Sherlock Holmes. “You’ve just come back from a holiday in Egypt, and today, you smell of Egypt”.
Of course, there are also less pleasant smells. Neither the stinks of traffic fumes, nor cannabis smoke, nor decaying rubbish, nor sewage, nor Marmite thrill. They don’t thrill me, anyway. Neither do some things which are supposed, if not to smell nice, to stop things smelling nasty
I used to happily buy a particular air freshener which was designed to “neutralise” unpleasant odours. It did too. Then some misbegotten fool thought that it would be a good idea to undermine the product, and make it “mask” the aforementioned bad odours. This was to be achieved by adding to the chemical cocktail, vile things designed to give the impression that someone’s sitting room was actually a beautiful meadow, or a forest, or a bankrupt tart’s boudoir. After choking on this noxious vapour, one notices that the bad odours have returned, and are clashing alarmingly with the grass, or trees, or shabby-chic knocking shop, or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be. I’m not sure whether this formerly fabulous air freshener has become an industrial pollutant or an offensive weapon.
But the madness doesn’t stop there. Not only do we now have to put up with scented refuse sacks, but we are asked to throw our money down the drain and buy perfumed lavatory paper. Do the competing toilet roll tycoons and bog roll billionaires think we should become like dogs, and sniff each other’s rear ends? Will fashionistas sneer at those who buy the Wrong brand? “But darling, their anal bouquet is so terribly last season.”
I had a job to find unscented laundry detergent. I did eventually, and it’s such a relief not to feel the pre-sneeze tingle when getting dressed.
As well as the pernicious corporate obsession with fake fragrances, one must contend with the craziness of the individual. In an effort to smell clean, people use all sorts of soaps, shampoos, deodorants and so on. Fair enough. But they don’t think about whether or not these products compliment one another. They are, after all, usually scented. And they can clash. And then, there are those who will spend a king’s ransom on a bottle of perfume or aftershave, then wast it by overlaying it on cheap, nasty products. Surely the idea is to smell clean, or alluring, not confusing?
This overload is surely not good for us? During my previously mentioned tour of an Egyptian perfumery, a jar of coffee was passed around. The idea was that it would give our noses a break from all of the other smells. Would life be easier if we could have a similar break from time to time? If we could return to having those products which don’t need a perfume being unscented, we could enjoy other smells more. And who knows what benefits that might have?
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Spiteful Champions
Imagine, dear reader, that you are settling down to watch a romantic film, or read a romantic book. The plot is a fairly unremarkable love story, that goes something like this.
Our hero falls in love. The object of his affections is not thought by many to be especially beautiful, but nevertheless, she captures his heart. He also captures the heart of our heroin. But although they love each other, various circumstances mean that they cannot marry.
Time passes, and our unfortunate lovers are forced to accept the reality of their position. So our heroin marries and has two children. Then our hero marries a much more beautiful woman, who gives him two children.
Both marriages, though, are, if not loveless, certainly love deficient. Our hero’s wife is unfaithful, as is our heroin’s husband.
Eventually, both couples separate, and our hero and heroin resume those happy relations that had been cut off years before. Divorces follow, leaving them free to marry should they wish. After some years, they do, and can be content together for their remaining years.
As I said, an unremarkable story, but one with the “Aww” factor. Unremarkable, that is, until one considers that it was not fiction dragged from my imagination, but part of the life stories of King Charles III and Queen Camilla.
It isn’t known exactly why the then Prince Charles was prevented from marrying Camilla Shand. One suggestion is that the Queen Mother wanted him to marry a Spencer, as one of her best friends was a member of that family. Another is that the Prince’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, wanted the heir to the throne to marry his granddaughter. Whatever the reason, we do know that, in 1973, while the Prince was away on naval duties, the marriage took place between Camilla Shand and the dashing army officer, Andrew Parker Bowles. Incidentally, the novelist, Jilly Cooper, is said to have partially based her character, the heartthrob and cad, Rupert Campbell-Black on Parker Bowles.
And of course, we all know the story of Prince Charles’ disastrous marriage to Lady Diana Spencer. We have heard about the infidelities on both sides, and many of us will remember the separation, the gutter press publishing details of recordings of private phone conversations, the television interviews, the divorce, and finally the tragedy of Diana’s death in Paris in 1997. The Parker Bowles’ divorce in 1995 was another episode in the drama, albeit a slightly less exciting one as far as members of the gutter press were concerned.
Most people will also remember the opprobrium heaped upon the Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles, especially during the 1990s. Fortunately, this diminished over time, and by keeping her head down, and doing what has been asked of her without fuss, especially since their marriage in 2005, we reached the point where Queen Camilla is almost universally accepted, even if she isn’t universally loved. Almost.
So why am I raking over these old coals? Blame social media. Last Saturday evening, in amongst all the Facebook and Twitter posts about the moving coronation service, the splendour of the procession, the brilliance of the horses, and the occasional complaint about the expensive flummery that goes with hereditary monarchies, I read a number of statements to the effect that as far as their authors were concerned, Diana is “the real Queen”. This is both nonsensical and cruel.
It is nonsensical for two reasons. Firstly, and most obviously, she is dead. A dead woman cannot be crowned. Secondly, as mentioned above, she and the then Prince Charles were divorced. From the moment that the decree absolute was granted, she was never going to be, could never be, Queen.
It is not any a cruel thing to say about the Queen, and by extension the King, but about Diana too. In her now infamous television interview, Diana stated that, “there were three of us in this marriage”. She was right. Contrary to her deluded champions, Diana was not the victim. She was a victim. One of three victims. Neither she, nor Charles, nor Camilla were happy. They were all the victims of people behind the scenes. To wish that Diana had been crowned last Saturday instead of Camilla, is to have wished at least another thirty years of dreadful unhappiness on those three dreadfully unhappy people.
Rather than carrying on their spiteful vendetta on behalf of a woman they have never met, against a woman they will never meet, these people should rejoice in the fact that, although it didn’t happen until middle age, the King and Queen have finally been able to be together and happy. How many people can honestly say the they are with the loves of their lives? Not many. But luckily for them, those two can.
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Council Candidates, Quote Hank
As I write, the leaders of the main political parties are campaigning for tomorrow’s local elections. None of them are up for election, and it is quite possible that none of them know those people who are candidates. It is also quite possible that those candidates wish that their party leaders would stay as far away as possible.
To an extent, one can understand why Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and Sir Ed Davey which to enter the fray. Not only do they want their respective parties to do well, but they want to be seen to be getting their own political messages to the people. They believe that we need reminding of how good they are, or how much better than the others they would be, or simply that they still exist. Oh, and they think that it will indicate how well they will do in the next parliamentary elections.
All of this is, of course, foolish nonsense. Here are three reasons why.
Firstly, They are local elections. The aforementioned party leaders deal with national and international affairs. Given that they grapple on a daily basis with such problems as how to inject new life into the economy, or making the National Health Service work, or evacuating British citizens from Sudan, and a whole host of other issues, Bin collections, street lighting and sewage are not likely to dominate their minds. And that is as it should be.
Secondly, the conduct of parliamentarians has a negative effect on local politics. Good conservative councillors have struggled because of the antics of Boris Johnson and his cronies. Similarly, good Labour councillors suffered because of Jeremy Corbyn when he was their leader. Councillors have nothing to do with parties in Downing Street, or equivocation on the issue of Brexit. It is appalling, therefore, that good men and women are made to feel that they have to give up serving their local communities because of some idiot or group of idiots, often hundreds of miles away.
Thirdly, one set of election results is usually meaningless when compared with another. Let us consider, for example, the elections for the European Parliament in 2019. The majority of UK seats were won by the Brexit Party, with the Liberal Democrats coming second. Labour and the Conservatives both performed dreadfully. But things were very different in December, when we elected the current parliament. The Conservatives won their largest majority since 1987, and Labour took their biggest drubbing since 1935. The Liberal Democrats performed so badly that their leader lost her seat, and the Brexit Party has become an unfortunate memory. So nobody can assume that tomorrow’s results will have any baring on an election which could still be eighteen months away.
As a voter, I’m glad that none of Westminster’s big hitters are in my area. If I were a candidate, I’d be equally relieved. I’d also have the desire to quote the country music legend, Hank Williams, to my parliamentary counterparts. “If you mind your own business, you won’t be minding mine.”
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Misery, Apparently, Loves Competition
When I was sixteen, and thoroughly fed up with school, I went to a Royal Navy recruitment office. I knew that it was, at best a fool’s errand, but I didn’t care.
“Yes?” barked the man at the counter. Government institutions always seem to have counters, rather than desks in their reception areas. Why is that? Sorry. I digress. Getting back to the plot …
“I’d like to join the Navy,” I replied.
“Tell me, boy,” quoth he, “is that a white stick in your hand?”
“Umm … yes, sir, it is,” I said quietly. Actually, the proper term is “long cane”, but even my sixteen-year-old self realised that this wasn’t really the moment for my usual pedantry.
“Right,” he thundered, “well bugger off, and don’t waste my time!”
An entirely predictable, and indeed predicted, outcome. But, when I tell the story almost three decades later, I get asked if I was hurt by so blunt a rejection. The answer is no. My approach was foolish, and the rebuff was sensible.
There have, naturally, been other rejections since, both personal and professional. Of course, employers aren’t meant to refuse jobs on the grounds of disability, unless for health and safety reasons, but it happens. No similar rules can, or indeed should, govern dating, but I, and other people I know have been told things like, “I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t date a blind person”. Most of these things can, and are, shrugged off. At least by me. The exception to this, was the time when I failed to get a job as a Braille teacher. Despite training me, and knowing me to be qualified, the institution that had advertised the post elected to appoint a fully sighted, less well qualified person instead. I knew I was in a better position to do the job than the successful candidate, because I had been present at their first Braille lesson. Whilst I have absolutely nothing against the person who got the job, I must confess to a high degree of irritation with the organisation concerned.
Of course, being turned down by possible employers or potential partners isn’t the only societal difficulty for blind people. We are often overlooked, dismissed, or patronised. We are often grabbed by complete strangers – who may well have the very best of intentions, but one never knows – because, they tell us, we might brush past a lamp post that is about five yards away, and are expected to be grateful. A word of advice, dear reader, don’t do it. Not only is it grossly discourteous, not only is it deeply offensive, not only can it be alarming and distressing, but I’m advised that it is, legally speaking, a form of assault. There are other ritual humiliations which are part of the daily grind, but I shan’t bore you with them now.
Does all of the above make blind people victims? Yes and no. Yes, because we are all victims of our circumstances. But no, we are not special cases of victimhood. So why, you will want to know, am I banging on about all of this tedium? The answer is Diane Abbot, the first Labour member of Parliament to be both black and a woman.
For those who have missed the drama, let me offer a brief explanation. Diane Abbott wrote a letter to The Observer newspaper, in which she asserted that although ethnic groups such as the Irish, Romani and Jews experience prejudice, only people of colour are truly victims of racism. This is both an absurd and offensive proposition. All three groups can tell of centuries of persecution of their forefathers, simply for the crime of being who they were. Not all Jewish people are white. And the holocaust, in which six million people were killed (almost all of whom were Jewish or Romani), was the most egregious expression of racial hatred in history. Abbott pointed out that Irish Americans were not compelled to sit at the back of busses in the segregationist southern states, nor were Jewish South Africans denied the vote during the apartheid era. True. But in Germany during the Nazi era, Jewish people not only had to have brightly-coloured stars of David sewn onto their clothes, but weren’t allowed on busses at all.
Abbott has since been suspended from the Labour Party, as her letter has been deemed to be antisemitic. She has also apologised, and offered the bizarre defence that it was a draft letter, not the version that should have been published. But she still wrote it. And she hasn’t published any other version of the letter.
I’m not trying to compare racial discrimination with that suffered by blind people. They are two different things. Comparison is, therefore, meaningless. I’m simply trying, in my clumsy way, to say that playing the game of “I’m more of a victim than you” is fatuous at best. As I said above, we are all victims of our circumstances. It is, therefore, not a competition.
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