Terminal decline

 HS2 is, according to this week’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, going to travel all the way in to Euston Station. This seems to be news. It’s quite extraordinary there should be any doubt – except, of course, that the whole endeavour is a monumental waste of money.

Of all the billions squandered by Governments, few can be as extravagantly nonsensical as a railway line few people will ever use even if they could afford the inevitably sky-high fares.

HS2 was, is and always will be one of the most profligate wastes of money any Government (Tories and Labour are equally to blame) has yet devised.

The suggestion it might terminate five miles from central London is so unutterably ludicrous that even talk of it reveals the truly terrible ridiculousness of this profligate project. Even now, it would be better to scrap the whole thing, write off the fortune already wasted and find better things to do with our money.

If giving some of it back through the tax system is too much to ask then what about developing a secure energy supply before electricity rationing becomes a way of life?

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64417101

The Royal Wokessphere Company

 When ‘Cymbeline King of Britain’ was staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company a while ago I asked for my money back because the title role was to be played by a woman.

This year it’s got worse. Prospero, the Duke of Milan (a man, the clue is in the word Duke) in ‘The Tempest’ is being played by a woman. Now Brutus and Cassius, the two main opponents of ‘Julius Caesar’ in the play of the same name, are also being played by women.

The RSC is wasting taxpayers’ money on this ridiculous woke nonsense. It is short-changing audiences who have a right to expect a reasonable interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays given this company is supposed to be one of the country’s leading arts organisations. And they are abusing their power to twist the plays to suit their own ends.

What’s more, having been refused a refund for ‘Cymbeline’, I made the mistake of going to see it. The play was dire because it was never clear if the ‘king’ was supposed to be male, female or other and the whole thing was a terrible mess. I very much hope audiences will tell the RSC what they think by melting into thin air.