Masking the truth

The point has finally come where I am not prepared to defend Boris Johnson and his government any longer.
The decision to impose a face mask on the entire population is the last straw. This camel’s back has broken.
The medical evidence for the use of face masks is not overwhelming. There is some suggestion they may help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and it would seem logical that an airborne disease would be less virulent if it’s spread were to be inhibited.
Yet only a few weeks ago the Government claimed masks were more or less useless and should not be worn by ordinary people.
This, too, was based on medical advice. Not advice about whether masks prevent the spread of disease but advice that encouraging ordinary people to wear them would restrict their availability to the NHS.
This suggests that, back in March, the Government knew masks helped slow the spread of disease and wanted to protect those most at risk.
Fair enough, you may think. But it must mean the Government lied and lied and lied again about the use of masks.
Only now, when infections have fallen, the risk has lessened and supplies of masks are plentiful, does the Government change the law and make wearing face masks compulsory in shops as well as on public transport.
This represents an attack on our very humanity, never mind the fact that it is yet another imposition on our long-lost, late-lamented freedoms.
And why are face masks suddenly necessary? Supposedly to give us more confidence to go shopping without fearing the proximity of other people.
It is yet another attack on civil liberties, like the laws which made it a criminal offence to attend a loved one’s funeral or banned lovers from spending the night together.
And yet the number of deaths from Covid-19 is still lower than the number of people who died from flu just three winters ago when no precautions were taken, no impositions on our liberty were thought necessary and, in reality, nobody noticed.
Whatever happened to common sense? Of course we must avoid situations where infection might be spread, such as Black Lives Matter demonstrations, rave parties or football celebrations.
But as next to nothing is done to prevent such potentially calamitous situations, why launch an out-and-out assault on ordinary people going about their daily business?
For months the Government has been criticised over its response to the virus. It failed to prepare. It reacted slowly. It has squandered billions. It has presided over the unprecedented, totalitarian destruction of our civil liberties.
And yet we have the highest death toll in Europe. So, on any measure, the Government failed to protect us or mitigate the consequences of the virus.
I have so far argued Boris Johnson and his ministers were doing as well as could be expected in these strange times.
I don’t believe that any longer. They are lost, flailing around in the dark, timid, uncertain, so terrified of their own shadows they are clueless and they have exposed their own incompetence for all to see.
The face mask fiasco is a fine example of their failure. Either we should have had them all along or they are a mere cosmetic decoration imposed for no reason other than to make ministers feel they are doing something.
The threat of a £100 fine for not wearing a mask in the shops may give some of us more confidence. Others, me included, will merely avoid the shops as much as possible so I do not have to wear a mask or encounter other dehumanised automatons in their full timidity.
How can we hope for the world to return to normal when we are supposed to walk around in these grim reminders of the great plague?
Boris Johnson and his unimpressive chums have wrecked our economy, destroyed lives and ruined the education of an entire generation of young people.
And in exchange they have allowed the NHS to desert its post so anyone with an illness that’s not coronavirus is neglected while elderly patients have been off-loaded onto care homes where they have spread the infection far and wide.
The scandalous way this government has dealt with the outbreak is beyond belief.
The confusion over face masks is not, in itself, a reason to revile Mr Johnson and his inept administration. But it is symbolic of their utter failure at every stage.
There has been, and will continue to be, a heavy price to pay for their shambolic incompetence. I don’t see how we can ever trust this lot again.

 

The Ballad of John Newton

 

John Newton was the sea captain
Who wrote ‘Amazing Grace’.
He helped abolish slavery
But had another face.

Newton found God after a storm
Which almost sank his ship
As she returned to Liverpool
After a slaving trip.

Before then he’d been a trader
In the infamous trade,
When human lives didn’t matter
As money could be made.

One time Newton was sold as well,
To an African princess,
Who starved him and who laughed at him
And caused him great distress.

Freed by a friend of his father
He went back to the ships.
He got to captain his own brig
While making several trips.

He bought men, women and children,
And stowed them below deck.
He threw the dead over the side
And flogged and chained the rest.

The men he bought them from
Were African as well.
They didn’t care they’d turned black lives
Into a living hell.

Eventually he saw the light
And took another course.
BHe campaigned to end slavery
With William Wilberforce.

Newton became a clergyman
And a writer of hymns
But his past was always with him,
All his terrible sins.

So should we call him a hero,
Or forget time and place
And revile him for a slaver
And ban ‘Amazing Grace’?

PS: To those who say, ‘We don’t believe yer’,
I say, ‘Check out Wikipedia.’

 

China's Nazis

I wrote this article 12 years ago and things have got a lot worse since the Beijing Olympics:

The Olympic Games in China are the most disgraceful event of the year. We should not be supporting a corrupt and criminal regime just because it’s an economic superpower. 

Do not let anyone trot out the old nonsense about how this is all about sport and we should not try to mix that up with politics.

The fact is the Peking Olympics are about politics first, big business second with sport trailing a long way behind in the bronze medal position.

Every commentator, correspondent and corrupt apologist for China who defends participation in these games does so by arguing that they have nothing to do with the Communist regime which governs the country.

And in the very next breath they describe these games as China’s “coming out party” as one of the world’s great economic super-powers.

They can’t have it both ways. Either the Games are not about the host nation or they are a showcase which allows China to get down into the arena with the big nations and flex its drug-enhanced muscles alongside Japan, Germany, Russia and the United States.

To the Chinese Government, these Olympics are a virility symbol. China has conned its own people and the rest of the world into going along with its wicked charade of openness and decency. 

It must have been very much the same as this when the nations competed in Berlin in 1936 in front of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. 

There is very little difference between his dictatorship and that of Chinese President Hu Jintao who thinks we should avoid "politicising" the Games.

China is a police state. People are executed in their thousands every year, imprisoned without trial in their tens of thousands, denied freedom of speech in their millions. 

The apologists and quislings who want their freebie works outings to the Games – including the 437 BBC staff out there at our expense – argue it’s all OK because the standard of living is so much higher than it used to be. 

That’s true up to a point – though wages are low, pollution levels are at Victorian sweat-shop levels and rice has trebled in price. 

Of course, the International Olympic Committee is one of the world’s richest gravy trains. The Games tend to get sold to the highest bidder. Pockets get lined. Money is made. 

And money talks. We are so desperate for Chinese money we send out political leaders on grovelling expeditions to polluted outposts of Communism. They hold out their begging bowls, plead poverty and ask for investment in this country. 

We find ourselves celebrating the few crumbs from the rich man’s table when they knock out a few new MGs at the shadow of what was once the Longbridge car plant.

Meanwhile, this week 16 Chinese police officers were allegedly murdered by Muslim extremists, which conveniently helps to justify the arrest of 82 supposed terrorists last month and a further crackdown by the regime. 

It is quite possible the killings are genuine – though nobody should believe propaganda issued by the Chinese Government even if they see it with their own eyes. 

And nobody in their right mind would want to see Muslim fundamentalists make headway anywhere in the world. 

Yet we’re dealing with a country which locked up students after the Tiananmen Square protest in 1989 and threw away the key. Almost two decades later they’re still in prison – but such is the “openness” of this country that nobody even knows how many people have been deprived of their liberty after calling for more freedom and democracy in China. 

Amnesty International say that in the run-up to the Olympics, China has locked up, put under house arrest and forcibly removed people threatening the image of “stability” and “harmony” the regime the world to see. 

Chinese Communism is guilty of promoting civil war, starvation and atrocity in Sudan, suppressing Tibet and threatening Taiwan. 

I would like to see British Olympians come home crowned in glory. I shall probably watch some of the real track and field events and avoid the rest because they’re a joke whether they take place in Athens, Peking or London. 

I shall despise myself for giving even that comfort to the enemy. Because while China may not be threatening our lives or livelihood directly, it is a country we can’t trust and shouldn’t do business with. 

The Olympics are corrupt anyway. They’re all about who can take drugs and get away with it. Who can get the biggest sponsorship deals. Who can enjoy the most lucrative TV rights.

 

And I have no doubt someone in the Chinese Government is even now announcing: "The sportive, knightly battle awakens the best human characteristics. It doesn't separate, but unites the combatants in understanding and respect. It also helps to connect the countries in the spirit of peace. That's why the Olympic Flame should never die."

These are noble sentiments. They help to explain why we should keep politics out of sport and enjoy the competition for its own sake.

Or they would help to explain it. Except for one small problem. These are the words used at the 1936 Olympics by none other than Adolf Hitler himself.

The sick man of Europe

When this terrible crisis is over, I sincerely hope the National Health Service will not come out of it unchanged.
We have all been full of admiration for the doctors, nurses and other health workers who risk their own lives to care for others.
This should not blind us to the terrible failings in the NHS. Its organisation, management and infrastructure should not be allowed to survive unscathed.
For individual workers, this may well have been their finest hour. Never was so much owed by so many.
But this has not been the NHS’s finest hour. The selfless heroism of many health workers should not blind us to the bureaucracy’s fatal - literally fatal - ineptitude.
From before the crisis became a crisis, the NHS bureaucracy in all its bewildering variety has proved itself time after time to be inefficient, bungling, complacent, aimless and incompetent.
Of course, supporters of the status quo will argue first that the NHS has been a victim of cuts and austerity for so long it’s no wonder it wasn’t prepared. They will then claim the crucial decisions were made by politicians, as if that lets the bureaucrats off the hook.
The truth is, funding for the NHS has rocketed while efficiency has plummeted. Every extra £1 spent on the health service these days yields about 10p’s worth of improved services.
On almost all measures, we have one of the worst health services in the developed world.
Yet in the past few months Boris Johnson’s Government has been led entirely by the advice it receives from experts who work in the NHS directly or in one of its many service industries like Imperial College, London.
And that advice has been mixed, to say the least. First, there was no cause for alarm. Then there was a policy of herd immunity. Then there was lockdown.
These contradictory policies were based on flawed and contradictory expert advice. As a result we must endure the devastation of the British economy, with petrifying long-term consequences.
Meanwhile cancer patients and others with potentially fatal illnesses don’t even get to see a GP.
We were told testing was the ‘game changer’. Once we knew who had suffered the illness and who hadn’t, all would be well.
It turned out there were few reliable tests and the NHS had centralised the entire system in one location thus ensuring it would take forever to get any results.
To make matters worse, private companies and universities queued up offering help and were ignored. Possibly this was because of the inadequacy of the NHS bureaucracy, possibly because of a doctrinaire refusal to deal with ‘the private sector’ but, most likely, it was the result of a collective instinct to command and control everything even if it cost lives.
The slow and inadequate testing regime was blamed on Ministers yet they have given the NHS a blank cheque and complete freedom to deal with it. The failures lie at the door of the NHS’s overpaid executives.
The same applies to shortages of personal protection equipment. Why were there shortages?
It is more understandable the NHS might be tripped up by a shortage of intensive-care respirators but its attempts to acquire more were chaotic. Ministers, aware of the need, appealed to private businesses to make them. Many responded. Alas, again, the NHS failed to react.
Where, you might ask, were the highly-paid executives responsible for NHS procurement?
The health service employs more than 4,000 people in purchasing jobs, some of them being paid well over £100,000. Why did these executives fail to secure an adequate supply of PPE for their colleagues?
Of course, part of the problem with the NHS is the way jobs are dished out to superannuated politicians who get to sit on trust boards and pocket hefty salaries for doing nothing but attend a few board meetings to rubber-stamp the decisions of their managers. And the managers themselves have little or no experience of managing anything outside the health service.
That means they are often quite incapable of behaving in a businesslike fashion and plod on without imagination, ingenuity, creativity or any real interest in medical or financial improvements.
The entire lockdown was thrust upon us not so much to protect us from the virus as to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed with sick patients.
That’s understandable up to a point but, as a result, thousands of people with other illnesses are being neglected and driven to an early grave.
An adequate health service would ensure the cure does not cause more fatalities than the disease. Thanks to NHS failures, it is quite possible lockdown will eventually be seen as the greater of two evils.
At the moment, the whole country is in love with the NHS. We applaud and thank its workers every Thursday evening. We donate money. We admire health workers for putting their lives at risk to save ours (though the Covid-19 mortality rate among NHS staff is actually a quarter of what it is for the population as a whole).
But if and when this is all over, we must not be afraid to criticise the NHS. It led us into this war without adequate weapons to fight it and thousands of lives have been sacrificed as a result.
That is not the result of ‘austerity’ or ‘the cuts’. It is due to a whole catalogue of issues including, let us not forget, the health service’s success in keeping us all alive for longer than at any time in human history.
But the organisation has failed its staff and patients throughout the coronavirus crisis. If things get back to near-normal, we need to learn from our mistakes.
Above all, given we have one of the worst coronavirus mortality rates in the world, that means learning from other countries which do things better than us.
However much we revere it, the terrible truth is the NHS is the sick man of Europe.

Covid-19 is Green

For Greta
Things are getting better.
Covid-19
Is positively Green.
We can’t fly anywhere
Which means cleaner air.
It’s almost illegal to drive
So dandelions thrive.
We’re grudgingly free to take a walk
But don’t sunbathe or talk.
The police
Won’t let us out on day release.

Capitalism’s in shock:
Supermarkets are out of stock,
Food’s in such fashion
It’s rationed.
We aren’t allowed out
To shop, eat or otherwise flout
The incarceration
Of the nation.
So many people dying
Might stop the earth frying
And at least you can see
More whales in the sea.

The average woman or bloke
Is broke.
Jobs are being lost
But maybe it’s worth the cost
For Greta’s mission
Is lower emissions.
Now she’s got what she’s after:
Global disaster.
It’s obviously the solution
To international pollution.
This is the aim of environmental sages:
A swift return to the Middle Ages.

 

 

TEED OFF

Football,
Not at all.
Rugger’s
A bugger.
Tennis
Is a menace.
Cricket’s
A sticky wicket.
Athletics
Makes you sick.
Riding a horse
Is worse.
You can’t drive far
In a racing car.

All we can do is talk
Or go for a nice long walk
Unspoiled
And call it golf.

The Wuhan Clan

The Chinese sneeze
Is such a tease.

You don’t know if it’s just a cold in the head
Maybe until you’re dead.

Panic-buying’s a necessary reaction.
At least we’re taking action

While Boris and co look panic-stricken
And several of their advisers sicken.

There is some refinement
To solitary confinement,

We’ve got whatsapp and such
To keep in touch

And from the cities to the sticks
There’s always Netflix.

Even so
There’s nowhere to go,

The Government says it’s best you
Stay at home or they’ll arrest you.

We have to eke out the days as a matter of course;
Unhappy couples contemplate divorce

And nasty germs spread and spiral
Like a Twitter tweet that’s going viral.

The Chinese sneeze
Has brought us to our knees.

Lying, cheating, money-grubbing bastards #9 Talktalk

Years ago it was decided that, to improve competition between broadband providers, customers would be able to keep their email addresses even if they switched to a new company.

It turns out you are subject to blackmail. We were originally with Tiscali, who became Talktalk. We were happy with Tiscali, increasingly unhappy with its new owners.

We switched to BT and later to Sky as getting decent broadband seems to be hard to achieve. But kept our original Tiscali email addresses rather than going through the rigmarole of changing them whenever we switched broadband provider.

Now Talktalk have held us to ransom and any saving we may have made moving to Sky is lost because we have to pay these Talktalk bastards £5 a month for the privilege of retaining our email addresses. And we can’t use Sky instead because they no longer apply email addresses (why? Who knows?).

The following exchange with what I assume is a person, not a machine, called Nobule brings you up to date:

Why are you still sending me threatening blackmail emails warning my email account will be axed if I don’t pay your ransom money when I am already paying and I have already complained once and received an assurance it won’t happen again?

Good Afternoon Nigel You are through to the Customer services and billing team , I do understand however please be advised that these emails are automated , please kindly disregard emails that do not apply to you .

Why can’t you turn off the automation? How can you justify this maltreatment?

Unfortunately I am unable to do so , Please advised if these emails are regarding the TalkTalk mail plus ?

They are although where the plus bit comes from I can’t imagine. Though you cannot be unable to turn off the automation, I do not believe you entire organisation is incapable of doing so and, if it is incapable, that is another good reason why I switched broadband provider some time ago though that decision was made because your service was so terrible.

Some time later....

I was talking to someone called Nobule about a complaint but she seems to have cut me off.

No reply.

See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51571275

 

I dreamt last night I listened to 'Today'

Top Royal Shakespeare luvvie Greg Doran claims young actors need to learn about the iambic pentameter, the basis of most Shakespeare plays, because it is now so alien to them.

I dare say he’s right to claim young people have ‘less experience with classic texts’ but this prompted BBC Radio 4’s ‘Today’ programme to ask if that meant the iambic pentameter in particular was in decline.

In reality, we all use it every day. It is the natural rhythm of our speech. To demonstrate it, here is a list of lines from popular music all in iambic pentameter (you could argue these are all old songs, and they are, but I bet more recent examples would not be hard to find).

I saw her today at the reception – The Rolling Stones

Please allow me to introduce myself – The Rolling Stones

Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields – The Rolling Stones

I met a gin-soaked barroom queen in Jackson – The Rolling Stones

I was born in a cross-fire hurricane – The Rolling Stones

If you start me up, if you start me up – The Rolling Stones

Everywhere I hear the sound of marching – The Rolling Stones

Childhood living is easy to do – The Rolling Stones

It’s only rock and roll but I like it – The Rolling Stones

Sup up your beer and collect your fags – The Jam

I’m down in the tube station at midnight – The Jam

A police car and a screaming siren – The Jam

A freezing cold flat and damp on the walls – The Jam

Struggle after struggle, year after year. – The Jam

And the public gets what the public wants – The Jam

But I want nothing that society wants. 

If I never ever see you again. – The Jam

Really don’t mind if you sit this one out – Jethro Tull

It's been a long time since I rock and rolled – Led Zeppelin

There must be some kind of way out of here – Bob Dylan

One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock rock – Bill Hailey

I bet that you look good on the dance floor – Arctic Monkeys

We’re Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – Beatles

When I find myself in times of trouble – Simon and Garfunkel

Hey Jude, don’t make it bad. Take a sad song – Beatles

Dirty old river got to keep rolling – Kinks

When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears… – Simon and Garfunkel

Hey Mr Dream-Seller where have you been – Lindisfarne

We come from the land of the ice and snow – Led Zeppelin

It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled – Led Zeppelin

Well I dreamed I saw the knights in armour – Neil Young

Of all the love I have won or have lost – Beatles

I can see clearly now the rain has gone – Johnny Nash

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night – Fleetwood Mac

What crumbs of joy can I steal from this day? – Squeeze

Love is a stranger in an open car – Eurythmics

In the day we sweat it out on the streets – Bruce Sptingsteen

Of the runaway American dream

 Let me take you down ‘cos I’m going to – Beatles

I’m not in love, it’s just a silly phase – 10CC

Well good morning judge, how are you today? – 10CC

I was sick and tired of everything – Abba

Ridicule is nothing to be scared of – Adam Ant

I’m your top prime cut of meat, I’m your choice – Alice Cooper

We’ve come a long way since we last shook hands – Loudon Wainwright III

Set the controls for the heart of the sun – Pink Floyd

Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash – Pink Floyd

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brexit at last

Brum's barmy Bolsheviks plan a no-go zone

Bonkers Birmingham’s barmy Bolsheviks plan to ban cars from the city centre. They think we’ll all commute by tram or cycle down the Bristol Road on their toytown cycle lanes which at the moment are largely unused.

Admittedly they have been deliberately turning the entire centre of Britain’s second city into a giant car park already, with roadworks more or less everywhere.

That’s why it takes twice as long to get into the city centre as it used to only a decade ago.

It’s nothing to do with the volume of traffic or a growth in prosperity; it’s all about the measures taken to make life as awkward, time-consuming, inconvenient and even dangerous for the average motorist as possible.

This is because the city’s burgers, aided and abetted by the supposedly-Conservative elected Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, want to reduce air pollution, greenhouse gases and all the noxious fumes which they presumably blame for their own delusions.

The best way to reduce emissions from cars is to keep them moving. The worst source of air pollution from vehicles is when they are waiting with their engines idling in long queues.

Birmingham has made pollution far worse than necessary by deliberately setting out to make driving in and out as tedious and slow as possible.

There are queues caused by traffic lights, fatuous 20 mph speed limits and bus lanes everywhere. They are closing down some of the main routes in and out of town. Broad Street is to become a tram-road. They are demolishing the Perry Barr flyover. Now they want through traffic to stick to the ring-road which is clogged and dogged with traffic lights.

They say there will be a public consultation. This is nothing but a sham. Whatever the public thinks, the council’s ‘experts’ have already decided what will happen and no amount of public opinion will change their minds.

After all, they are squandering millions on their cross-city metro system which, far from making Birmingham the ‘modern European city’ of their hype, is calculated to thwart and deny motorists any access to the centre.

Fine if you happen to live there. Fine if you usually take the bus, train, bicycle or even walk into the centre of Birmingham.

But public transport is overcrowded, unreliable and slow. The vast majority of Birmingham commuters - 62 per cent or 222,000 people - travel by car every day.

The anti-car enthusiasts want to force people out of their cars and onto trams, buses or trains. They claim these will be so dramatically improved and it will be such a wonderful new experience we won’t want to go back to our cars even if we could.

Does anybody really believe that? It is far more likely motorists will simply go elsewhere if they possibly can, especially with ‘clean-air charges’ and workplace parking taxes on the way.

It may seem desirable to force motorists to by-pass Brum. If drivers avoid it altogether it would reduce pollution and reduce traffic jams.

But it would be economically disastrous. If motorists avoid the centre if Birmingham it will mean less money is spent in shops, restaurants and theatres.

Worse still, it will force some of the city’s big employers to move out. After all, if their employees can’t, or won’t, travel into the centre any more, they will struggle to recruit and retain staff.

They will move to cities where they are welcome.

We are told everything will be fine thanks to HS2, the high-speed railway line. But a car-ban will make it almost impossible for many people from the Black Country and elsewhere to the West of Birmingham to get any benefit at all from this grossly expensive white elephant.

And, in any case, there is still a chance Boris Johnson’s Government will finally see sense and scrap the whole thing because it will never pay for itself, it will be a railway for the rich only and the place which would benefit most from its development is London.

This is the opposite of what the new Government says it wants to achieve, which is the revival of the ‘left-behind’ Midlands and the North of England.

You could argue that banning traffic from Birmingham will benefit the rest of the region. But closing down the West Midlands’ capital city is a short-sighted, panic-stricken, badly thought-out policy being imposed as an experiment by politically-correct planners.

They clearly dislike cars and the people in them. They think we should all conform to their vision of a car-free city. In their la-la land, loads of smiling people skip in and out of quiet trams onto their bicycles and the sun is always shining.

Reality is not like that. This car-crash policy will destroy Birmingham and take the rest of the West Midlands down with it.

It’s particularly disastrous given that, in 20 years’ time, we’ll all be driving in non-polluting electric cars anyway.

How many serious cities deliberately, methodically, and with malice aforethought go out of their way to destroy their own economies? Only in bankrupt Birmingham could they dream up such nonsense.

Regendering engenders panic at the disco

The RSC having refused to give me my money back when I asked for it on the grounds that the play ‘King John’ should feature a man in the title role, I forced myself to go and see it for myself.
It stars Rosie Sheehy in the title role but, having sat through the whole thing unlike five people around me, I could find no answer to the overwhelming question: What was the point casting a woman as the king?
Short, fat little Rosie has a good voice and played the part well. But it was frequently confusing. Was this a woman pretending to be a man? Or a woman pretending to be a man who wanted to be a woman? Or a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman in order to pretend to be a man?
Was s/he flirting with the King of France or was that just pretend? Was none of it ambiguous and should the audience simply take it at face value that King John was simply a man played by a woman as if it made no difference?
The confusion was not confined to the King. The Cardinal is played by a woman as well. A woman with a handbag.
To make matters worse, it is all set in the 1960s and involves a certain amount of bizarre dancing which must be hideously embarrassing to perform. I felt very sorry for the poor cast.
We must conclude the director, Eleanor Rhode, has so little faith in William Shakespeare the only way she could bring herself to stage the play at all was by ripping it up and starting again.
In fairness, most Shakespeare plays are so well-known it is the director’s interpretation, or the actors’ skill, which reveal something new. But a play as obscure and rarely-performed as ‘King John’ has no need of gimmicks and trickery. There is, or should be, pleasure and interest merely in seeing it reasonably faithfully performed.
That hope was dashed the moment Rhode decided to give the lead role to a woman.
If we pretend this has nothing at all to do with Shakespeare then the production is reasonably entertaining aside from the cringe-making dance-moves which would have been embarrassing in any setting.
Without the £15 million of taxpayers’ money the RSC gets every year, they wouldn’t be able to deliver productions like this.
And the reaction of audiences can be seen by the fact that even on a Friday night close to Christmas, there were still plenty of empty seats (the three people beside us left at the interval, two more stumbled out mid-way through the second half).
The poet John Dryden adopted the Thatcherite view of the theatre: ‘The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please must please to live.’
In the RSC’s politically-correct socialist utopia, it’s more a question of: ‘The drama’s laws the drama’s luvvies give, for we do what we please thanks to fat subsidies.’

Regendering in luvvie-land

If you read my previous blog on the topic, you will know I complained to the Royal Shakespeare Company that their production of ‘King John’ featured a woman in the title role and I asked for my money back.

As far as I’m concerned, I was mis-sold my tickets because I expected, when I booked, that a man would play the King.

I reckoned without the widespread theatre policy of politically-correct casting (called, among other things, ‘regendering’). The RSC’s ‘Director for Audiences and Marketing’, Chris Hill, refused a refund though he did offer to swap the tickets for some other (doubtless equally-PC production) as ‘a gesture of good will’. An offer I ignored.

He told me: ‘I’m afraid we will have to agree to disagree on your opinions about Eleanor Rhode’s approach to King John who, in her view, cast the right person for the role irrelevant of gender and the production recently opened to some great reviews following its Press Night.’

He then regaled me with what the RSC’s luvvie-in-chief Greg Doran had to say at their last AGM: The first thing to say about Regendering is that it is nothing new. Exactly 120 years ago, this year here in Stratford, on a matinee performance in June 1899, the famous French actress, the divine Sarah Bernhardt played Hamlet.  It’s nearly 25 years since Fiona Shaw played Richard II; Glenda Jackson has just played King Lear on Broadway. And it’s a process of discovery we have been on at Stratford for quite some time, including Neil Bartlett’s Twelfth Night in 2007, in which Toby Belch, Andrew Aguecheek, Fabian and even Viola were all gender flipped. For me, regendering is also an opportunity: opening parts to exceptional actresses, for whom the traditional assignment of roles in the canon leaves little left for them to play.  Sometimes it’s a provocation, sometimes a revelation, but most of the time, you simply don’t notice, or quickly forget, as gender is not necessarily the primary motor of these characters. But it’s an exploration not a policy.’

This is all very well but I would contend most theatregoers don’t want to see our heavily subsidised national theatre companies distorting the world so flagrantly.

I wanted to pursue my complaint through the small claims court but the domestic goddess vetoed the idea. It seems, from a cursory look at theatre reviews, that ‘regendering’ is de rigueur in luvvieland so I am biting the bullet and going to see the damned thing. A review will follow after we have endured it to the bitter end.

Incidentally the production got 4 stars from the ‘Grauniad’ (no surprise there), the ‘Stratford Herald’ liked it but found it confusing, ‘The Times’ awarded 3 stars as did ‘The Telegraph’ which called it ‘jaunty but lightweight’. ‘The Morning Star’, Jezza Corbyn’s top read, might have been expected to be supportive but it concludes: This is essentially directors’ theatre, full of disparate ideas and images which never fully cohere into significant meaning. Poor old Shakespeare.’

Oh and check this out...

 

Christmas in Kabul, 1841

Well the good news is that I have bought into some new promotional thing which is supposed to make sure my book, 'The Trials of Eldred Pottinger', is widely promoted on tinernet.

The bad news is I'm not sure it's any good. Have a look and see for yourself. You're supposed to be able to read some of the pages, listen to a bit of audio (me, reading about Christmas in Kabul) and watch the promotional video.

Oh and feel free to pass it on to friends, relatives and anyone else who might be interested: https://www.book2look.com/book/hJnQ8wYZwK

The Impeachment of Horace Thompson

I've just written a new short story about Brexit: Appalled by the way our politicians have handled Brexit, Walsall plumber Dave Britten is literally dumbstruck. He is so angry he can no longer speak.

The last straw was the arrest and impeachment of the Prime Minister, Horace Thompson, on a charge of treason.

As the liberal remainer establishment goes to any lengths to thwart the will of the people, setting up a Government of National Unity under new Prime Minister Joe Berk, Dave Britten is completely lost for words.

This short story is one of those extremely rare works of fiction written from the point of view of the people who actually want the United Kingdom to leave the European Union.

Download a PDF for free here.

Alternatively, you can buy it on Amazon for a mere 99p.

It’s amusing, which is more than can be said for the Brexit process.

I thought this story would only be viable for about three days and would be taken down last Saturday but the shenanigans in Parliament mean it is still valid as of October 21.

Enemies of the people

The Supreme Court enemies of the people claim in their judgment:

This prolonged suspension of Parliamentary democracy took place in quite exceptional circumstances: the fundamental change which was due to take place in the Constitution of the United Kingdom on 31st October. Parliament, and in particular the House of Commons as the elected representatives of the people, has a right to a voice in how that change comes about. The effect upon the fundamentals of our democracy was extreme.

Yeah but… no but… I was under the impression our elected representatives had spent the last three years exercising their voice in how that change comes about - or, to be more accurate, trying to ensure that change never takes place.

This court case is just another feeble ploy in the long campaign to prevent the United Kingdom from ever leaving the European Union.

But when these whingeing remainers moan about sovereignty and democracy, please, please, please remember: Parliament handed sovereignty over this issue to the people in a democratic referendum. It is now trying to frustrate their decision and undermine the sovereignty Parliament itself handed over when it voted overwhelmingly for a referendum.

The fact that a majority of MPs don’t like our decision is irrelevant. They must not be allowed to impose a Parliamentary dictatorship on the people.

If they won’t do anything else then they must permit Boris Johnson to hold a General Election so we can clear out all those trying to frustrate the democracy of the people and replace them with delegates who will do as the people have told them to do.

RSC's 'King John' - ridiculous excess

A producer at the RSC has finally responded to my complaint that I don’t want to see a production of King John where the title role is played by a woman. Claire Birch says:

Dear Nigel Hastilow

Thank you for your email and for taking the time to get in touch.

The Royal Shakespeare Company is a national company and is in receipt of significant public funding.  It is our mission to ensure Shakespeare is for everyone and therefore it is our responsibility to reflect the nation in our work from the perspective of diversity, gender, regionality and disability. Everyone feels more connected to the stories we tell if they can see or hear themselves.  

We create a huge range of work here and we accept that not all audiences will like all the choices that we make - be they design, directorial or performance

As we know Shakespeare had boys playing women, we feel certain he would have no problem with women playing roles seen as traditionally male.  The director's approach to King John was not about gender. The play is about politics, wars and family feuds, gender feels irrelevant within this context. Queen Elinor herself says to the Bastard: Bequeath they land to him and follow me? I am a solider and now bound to France.

I would urge you to give the show a chance. We have had fantastically positive responses from audiences so far. 

With best wishes 
Claire 
Claire Birch
Producer

 I’ve replied:

Dear Claire

Thank you for your belated reply.

You say it is your mission to make sure Shakespeare is for everyone and it is therefore ‘our responsibility to reflect the nation in our work from the perspective of diversity, gender, regionality and disability. Everyone feels more connected to the stories we tell if they can see or hear themselves'.

I really do not accept that, in trying to attract as wide an audience as possible, it automatically follows that your work should reflect all the categories you set out in your email. Shakespeare already holds a mirror up to nature without the need for the RSC to cabin, crib and confine him in your organisation’s tedious, politically-correct straightjacket.

How you can possibly ‘feel certain’ Shakespeare would have no problem with women in men’s roles defeats me. You have no way of justifying that assertion beyond pointing out the obvious fact that his female characters were played by boys and young men. 
If the director’s approach to King John is not about gender, why cast a woman as a King when it immediately distracts from whatever her approach is actually about? The quote you supply does not seem to be any sort of justification. The RSC’s tedious policy of gender-blind casting is ‘wasteful and ridiculous excess’.

And claiming you have so far received ‘fantastically positive responses from audiences’ is completely disingenuous given that the play’s first public performance, in advance of its official first night, took place in the evening of the day you sent your email. 
When I booked tickets for King John, I had hoped to see a reasonably straightforward production of a rarely-performed play. I do not believe casting a woman in the title role will add to my understanding and appreciation of the play.

I am well aware that, as one of the many theatregoers who the RSC accommodates under sufferance (that is to say, white, male, elderly, middle-class etc), I realise my opinion is of no significance.

However, had I known the role of the King would be played by a woman, irrespective of how well-received the production might be among the cognoscenti, I would not have wasted £93 on two tickets to see it.

I accept that one should really see a play for oneself before criticising it but there are times, and this is one of them, when I would not have bothered to pay any attention to your production and merely wrung my hands in quiet despair (as I did on discovering the role-reversals in The Taming of the Shrew, for instance). I therefore repeat my request for my money back because, as far as I am concerned, the RSC sold the tickets under false pretences.

Playing the woman's part

On July 25 I sent this message to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford on Avon and, despite a pledge on their website to respond within three weeks, they have so far failed to reply:

As a regular visitor to your highly-subsidised playhouse, I am utterly sick of the way you abdicate responsibility for putting on vaguely reasonable productions (eg Coriolanus, King of Britain, being a woman; The Shrew being a man etc) but assumed King John would be a man. I bought tickets on that basis but discover you have cast a woman in the role and I have no wish to see this politically-correct nonsense. Please refund my money and explain the thinking behind these unreasonable distortions; whether you think you have any responsibility towards theatregoers to present anything remotely resembling an authentic account of Shakespeare's original intentions; how many more of these travesties you propose to stage; and how you justify the massive taxpayer subsidies which allow you to subject your audience to these pathetic whims.

 On September 20, I sent a further email:

I emailed you several weeks ago asking for my money back, having bought tickets for King John in the naïve belief that the title role would be played by a man. So far you have not responded at all. Your website promises replies. When can I expect one?

Brexit: we're doomed

Nightmare scenario: Brexit postponed again. Boris gets his election. He does not win as the Brexit vote is split by Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.

Corbyn gets the keys to Number 10 with the support of the SNP and pledges two referendums - on Brexit and Scottish independence.

All over by Christmas.

Oright orchid?

With murder and mayhem on the streets of the West Midlands, what do the law-abiding do? We stay at home and watch what one of its own stars calls the ‘disgustingly violent’ Peaky Blinders.
With gangland stabbings and shootings turning parts of the West Midlands into no-go areas and the police incapable of getting to grips with it, we would appear to be in the midst of a new crime-wave.
That’s why Boris Johnson’s temporary Government is promising more money for the police, more money for prisons and a crackdown on foreign criminals evading deportation.
Yet we are deluged with programmes like the much-hyped and widely-praised Peaky Blinders which can best be described as televised ‘crime-porn’. It makes the whole evil world of crooks and gangsters look glamorous and attractive even as it is pretending to moralise about how debilitating it all is.

There's a new series of Peaky Blinders, switched to BBC1 to get a bigger audience, with all the usual stylised violence and cruelty.
The series is so well put together - great music, atmospheric lighting, Black Country museum backgrounds and all - it invites us to look back on what supposedly happened 80 years ago with sepia-tinged nostalgia.
Next month there’s to be ‘The Legitimate Peaky Blinders Festival’ in Birmingham, so-called, it must be assumed, because someone has already tried to make an illegitimate, knock-off version, which seems strangely apt really.
Helen McRory, who plays Aunt Polly in the series, admits it is so ‘disgustingly violent’ she can’t watch it.
She goes on to defend this on the grounds that it would otherwise ‘normalise’ violence and that, in the series, these terrible crimes damage the criminals as well as their victims.
She says: ‘It should be horrifying and you should have the people who are responsible for the violence either unable to self-medicate or having mental health problems, or all the things that do happen to people, if you kill other people – because it is not a natural state of affairs.
‘And anybody who looks at the violence of Peaky Blinders and some sort of gun slashing scheme and thinks, “That exactly is what I want to do”…I mean, sick.’
She’s right to say anyone who wanted to copy the show’s violence might well be sick but the malign influence of television can’t be under-estimated. And our couch-potato willingness to embrace these shows must play a part in adding to the sickness.
It's not as if Peaky Blinders were a one-off. The majority of shows on mainstream television seem to involve criminals, usually murderers. And it is rare indeed to find any straightforward division between the goodies and the baddies.
Take Killing Eve, another widely-praised crime-porn series, where the impossibly glamourous hired assassin, who may be called Villanelle, ends up in some perverse relationship with Eve, the woman who is supposedly bringing her to justice.
Not an episode passes without Villanelle bumping off someone, often with a wry smile to camera as her victim is done-in thanks to some innovative or off-beat method of our anti-heroine’s devising.
This is all made seductively entertaining, to the point where we are far from horrified by these deaths and merely thrilled or excited by the audacity of the outrageously attractive villain.
Crime on television is seen to pay. There is no ‘moral compass’ pointing out what is right and what is not. There is a great deal of crime and hardly any punishment.
The moral ambiguity is everywhere, even in relatively straightforward, bland shows like Midsomer Murders or Endeavour.
Wherever you look on TV, the goodies always turn out to be baddies, the police are invariably corrupt while ‘the system’ is rigged in favour of the rich.
The rich themselves, as well as figures of power or authority such as politicians (especially if they are men) are always crooked.
Successful businesses are even worse - they have to be polluting, uncaring, malign money-making machines run by unpleasant, greedy selfish people.
That means even if the business itself isn’t breaking the law - polluting rivers, covering up blunders or something similar - it’s entirely understandable if criminals feel the need to rip them off.
All of this is part of the fun. These shows need to keep the viewers guessing. They have to mislead us as, in many cases, the intrigue is all about ‘whodunnit’ so there must be several plausible killers with good reasons to want one or more of the victims dead.
Out on the mean streets of the Midlands, it’s doubtful if many of the drugs gang members who go around knifing one another sit down quietly on a Sunday evening for a nice episode of Vera.
Yet the constant displays of violence and dead bodies, often in grisly detail, on our TV screens night after night must surely help to create a world in which such behaviour is increasingly seen as normal.
At the very least, like violent video games, crime-porn makes the unacceptable look attractive and without real-life consequences.
It's all very well for Helen McRory to write people off as ‘sick’ if they copy the violence of Peaky Blinders. We would all agree. But this is what we give ourselves as entertainment. Doesn’t that make us all just a bit ‘sick’ as well?
I’m not advocating censorship. There’s no point, these days, when things like the obscenity laws no longer apply. But must we be quite so fulsome in our praise for these crime-porn TV shows? Could the TV companies not tone down the violence a little? Do they bear no responsibility at all for the terrible real-life crimes on our streets?
In the end, I suppose, we get the television we deserve. But if they must keep broadcasting Peaky Blinders, couldn’t they at least employ a couple of actors capable of delivering a genuine Brummie accent?