Marble Arch – now ‘enhanced’ by a £2m slag heap because: “art!”

 

The silly season continues with ‘news’, illustrating the contempt in which the mandarins holds us serfs. It’s not just about covid and the surreptitious strangling of our lives. It’s about how they are wasting our, the taxpayers’ money, by rewarding themselves for their failures and by building a ‘Folly’. Words fail all round!

Let’s get the covid ‘news’ out of the way first. The NHS has added what amounts to a ‘domestic vaccine passport’ to their infamous app, thus surreptitiously letting the covid cabinet off the hook of having to legalise a mandatory covid jab policy. Raab, that eminent covid ‘scientist’ when he’s not doing his job as Foreign Secretary, said that:

“[…] employers that demanded their workers be vaccinated before coming to the office were introducing a “smart policy”. He said that threats of shutting the unvaccinated out of large areas of everyday life would help “coax and cajole” people to get their jabs.” (link, paywalled)

What is it with our and the EU and US politicians that makes them so determined to force us all into becoming jabbees? Perhaps we’ll be ‘saved’ by Human Rights lawyers! They’ve pointed out that ‘ethical vegans’ should be exempt from mandatory jabs. Companies may well be dragged into court on this issue because these vegans are protected by employment law:

“So-called ethical veganism was ruled to be a protected characteristic at a tribunal last year, meaning employers would risk legal action if they order staff to be vaccinated.” (paywalled link)

Even more interesting is that other people might also be protected by these laws, “including some religious groups as well as people with certain disabilities or medical conditions.” (paywalled link). As human rights lawyers are sniffing an opportunity here I wonder if they’ll also go to court when the covid government instead makes daily PCR testing mandatory. 

Another news item relates to the scandal of the Channel Taxi service for illegals provided by the Border Farce and the RNLI. After Nigel Farage reported about RNLI boats picking up illegal migrants in their rubber dinghies the RNLI CEO had a public wail – and lo and behold, this is what happened next:

“Donations to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) have soared since its chief executive described its role in rescuing migrants crossing the Channel as “humanitarian work”. Online gifts passed the £200,000 mark over a 24-hour period, up from about £7,000 on a typical day.” (link, paywalled)

Wasn’t this nicely orchestrated by the RNLI CEO! Apparently it’s sufficient to go to the MSM with an unsupported claim – ‘some horrible people have said something horrible to his staff’ – in order to deflect from what they really are doing: helping criminals to come here. So now they collect dosh from anonymous ‘online’ donors who could be anybody, from Gates to Soros. 

Meanwhile our dear Home Office mandarins, ultimately responsible for this scandal, show their utter contempt for us plebs. They’re raking it in while the ‘frontline staff’ like the police and border force personnel are refused a pay rise. The Times names them – I doubt if those people know any shame:

“Glyn Williams, director-general for policy and strategy in the border, immigration and citizenship system in the Home Office, has received a pay rise of up to £10,000, taking his salary to £140,000-£145,000. Tyson Hepple, head of immigration enforcement, has seen his earnings increase from £115,000-£120,000 to £125,000-£130,000. Paul Lincoln, head of Border Force, has been bumped up from a salary of £130,000-£135,000 to between £135,000 and £140,000. Matthew Rycroft, the department’s permanent secretary, received a salary of between £185,000 and £190,000 last year after moving to the Home Office from another Whitehall department — a pay rise of up to £20,000.” (link, paywalled)

Isn’t it lovely how irresponsibility and dereliction of duty is rewarded by pay rises on top of already eye-watering salaries! We’re paying for this without muttering – no wonder they hold us in contempt!

This contempt of those fat mandarin cats extends to the local ones. You’re all familiar with the rise and rise of ‘pop-up’ cycle lanes everywhere by which local councils up and down the country show their green credentials. Moreover, they’re now imposing ‘low traffic neighbourhoods’, closing down streets to cars. Richard Littlejohn fulminates on this in his column today (link), but what he doesn’t tell us is that, Brexit or not, the EU has their sticky fingers in this mess. Here’s what a friend emailed me:

“As we still pay into the EU, part of our contributions are being offered to Councils as part of the ‘EU covid regeneration’ fund. This will be badged here as the ‘EU regional development fund’. You may remember that trees and planters arrived in towns during the first lockdown, all badged with the EU logo and regional development fund on them. This time funds will be made available to councils etc  as long as they fly the EU logo from public buildings. All approved by Boris coz we ‘need the cash’. You couldn’t make it up :-)”

Do check out those pristine planters for the EU labels plastered coyly on one of the sides.

And so to the folly, the ‘Marble Arch Mound’. This is an artificial hill ‘created’ by a Dutch firm of architects. It’s at Park Lane, next to the Marble Arch. It cost the local council tax payers of Westminster Council a cool £2m. Local people did protest – but even those posh Westminster plebs are too thick to recognise ‘Art’, so it must be rammed down their throats. Have a look at the photos here.

Apparently the poor Dutch architects are now blaming the British weather for the way their ‘folly’ looks. This monstrosity will be removed in January next year – and all for £2m. Words fail me! The broadsheet ‘culture’ writers have now taken notice. One is calling it “a denuded lump of earth, wrapped round an M&S Foodhall” (paywalled link) while another writes:

“The mound’s promoters tell us it will offer spectacular views, although consumer experience so far suggests a visit is more akin, aesthetically speaking, to the back lot at Travis Perkins or the gardening section of B&Q than the vista from Helvellyn.” (link, paywalled)

Where were they when this slag heap was being planned? Were they bamboozled by the arty words from those Dutch architects? Did they think £2m were neither here nor there? Where are the lawyers standing up for the taxpayers, robbed of money and rewarded with an ‘arty’ slag heap?

There’s one final twist to the Marble Arch story. It was planned as a grand entry to Buckingham Palace. The building was stopped at the death of King George IV. The wiki entry blames his successor, but elsewhere we read that then then PM stopped it and sacked the architect – for overspending. That PM was none other than the ‘orrible ‘extreme’ Tory, the 1st Duke of Wellington. 

‘Tis not the first time during this covid debacle when I’ve wished for a modern-day Iron Duke in No 10 …

 

KBO!

 

Photo by rlparker38

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