Watching the hypocrites …

 

There’s a bit of brain-fog going around, so for today I’m forced to keep things short but not very sweet. My review of a new Matt Goodwin essay is postponed to next week. Let’s start with the reference to the Westminster ‘News’: “Newspaper headlines: ‘We three kings’ and ‘Phil fights for job’.” (link). In case you wondered: yon ‘Phil’ is someone on telly.

And so to the infuriating ‘news’. In case you’re unaware, there’s this telly thingie called ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ tonight. The BBC had graciously offered to host the event because the ‘winner’ last year was the Ukraine, and as we all know, they now need more weapons and thus can’t ‘do’ an international telly event.

Yesterday we read that the president of yon country, a former TV ‘personality’ who has taken to the airwaves to ‘appear’ practically everywhere and any ‘event’, wanted to address the international watchers of  the song contest. The BBC declined, saying that this contest was ‘unpolitical’ and such an address could not be permitted. Now we read that:

“The BBC [is] urged to overrule decision by Eurovision organisers and let Zelensky speak – Prime Minister says it would be fitting for the Ukrainian president to make an address as the ‘values’ he is fighting for are ‘fundamental’” (paywalled link).

What the fluff? What sort of ‘values’ are those where an international lot of ‘music-loving’ masses who generally can’t be bovvered with politics, must be lectured to about yon war, never mind if they want to hear pop music?

Well, let them do it, why not: ‘tis the best way of showing that even a pop song contest is now politics and propaganda pure. Why not place loudspeakers on ever lamp-post and force people to listen to propaganda? Tha would at least be honest!

The other news item is a lovely puff piece in The Times, about Ms Rachel Reeves, the Labour Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. The headline had me clutching my coffee mug, ready to throw at the wall – but I just remembered I’d have to buy a new one now, an unnecessary expense in these times of ‘cost-of-living crisis’: “Rachel Reeves: ‘I wouldn’t send my children to private school. I want them to see the world as it is’” (link, paywalled). 

Oh really? She wants her kids taught not much at all, in classes with ever more pupils unable to speak English, in schools where drag queens and trans ideology are thrust down their throats rather than English literature because that’s now irrelevant and damaging because ‘white privilege, slavery, colonialism, racism, sexism’, and all that jazz? Sure she does! 

She herself was educated at a School for Girls, so not the Labour gold standard of an inner-city comprehensive. There’s more:

[She] studied philosophy, politics and economics at New College, Oxford; MSc in economics from the London School of Economics. She joined the Bank of England as an economist after graduating. Left in 2006 to join HBOS in Leeds after turning down a job at Goldman Sachs.” (link, paywalled)

You decide if being ‘a banker’ is ok for a Labour politician or if it’s a piece of blatant hypocrisy. Also, having worked at the BoE should actually be a stain on a lefty’s escutcheon. Wait – her not ‘joining ‘Goldman Sachs’ probably absolved her …

I leave you with a stomach-turning piece in The Times. This refers to the “Three Kings”, the official photo of King Charles III flanked by Princes William and George. For reference, there’s a non-paywalled article in the DM, with the photo. Now though, the piece in The Times, headlined 

Trussing up George as a pageboy doesn’t sit well with a modern monarchy – Official portraits show how the nine-year-old prince’s destiny is fixed, but they’ll look odd by the time he is king” (link, paywalled)

To be fair: this thing comes in two parts. In the first part the reporter gives a cool, factual description which doesn’t fit the headline. The second part, written by a self-proclaimed ‘republican’, is an opinion piece which makes me wonder what ‘future’ yon writer and all the other republicans envisage (my emphasis):

“[..] not only people of my persuasion will feel uncomfortable at the sight of a nine-year-old boy exposed so glaringly to the public gaze in such a formal setting. Fair enough, we see pictures of Prince George all the time, but this one feels different. It places the boy starkly in the context of his role as a future king. Trussed up in Page of Honour kit, his dad and grandpa in even more opulent, ostentatious (not to say priceless) gear, the image says “this boy was born to be king” – and by the time he becomes one, maybe 50 years from now, the idea of a destiny fixed at the moment of birth is going to look seriously weird.” (link, paywalled)

It’s the ‘destiny fixed at birth’ I take issue with, because Western oligarchs  – we call them ‘entrepreneurs’ – are and haven been doing this for their offspring for decades. The sons of a certain Mr S., multi-billionaire, are ensconced in his various ‘charities’ which aim to overthrow regimes from inside. You’ve heard of ‘Open Society’ …

We’ve also heard of ‘Labour Princes’, offspring of certain Labour politicians, haven’t we. Moreover, why is there a new word, ‘nepo-babies’, in use if not because their ‘destiny’, to climb the greasy pole regardless, is also fixed at birth? Surely, what’s sauce for the non-royal goose should be sauce for the royal gander, no? 

That’s all I have for today. It’s not only the blatant hypocrisy which makes me furious, it’s the surreptitious one which has truly become the ‘unconscious bias’ of the Left. Have a good weekend.