Michael Gove plans to tweak river pollution laws to encourage housebuilding. This was occasion enough for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), an agglomeration of ‘The Fin, Fur, and Feather Folk’ and ‘The Plumage League’, to bestir itself, and to enter public life for the first time in opposition to the idea.
Organisations like these fill a niche in the English mind. The RSPB is one. So is the National Trust, the Church of England, the Women’s Institute and the Heritage Railway Association. They are mustily Rotarian. They are endearingly local. Their membership is charmingly old; their remit is charmingly narrow. They usually carry the stamp of royal patent, with all that that entails. They are cute. They speak to a certain idea of England that is, not quite Victorian, but certainly a kind of midcentury Christopher Robinesque. They are – for some reason – inextricably bound up with the person of Paddington Bear, and with Harold Macmillan.
Most of these bodies have now clashed with the current administration, over various issues. This hasn’t passed without comment. But here’s the strange thing about these rows. They are never about the actual substance of disagreement. Rather, it’s about the fact that these bouts are occurring in the first place. They are said to augur ill for the future of British society. We know that things are in dire straits, apparently, when even the guild of bird watchers feels compelled to enter upon political life. Things have gotten so bad that an ancient Middle England has been shaken from its repose, and is, in extremis, finally speaking up. Have you really even got the bloody British Hedgehog Preservation Society coming out against you? You’ve done it now, soul sister.
Interventions from these groups follow a familiar template. These organisations, all of which employ PR teams, are keenly aware of their twee mien, and trade on it lavishly. And so, the main method is to affect a kind of political virginity. This underlines how awful the target is for having driven these sweeties to such a precipice. In the RSPB’s case, this was accomplished through a particularly insipid tweet:
LIARS! @RishiSunak @michaelgove @theresecoffey you said you wouldn’t weaken environmental protections. And yet that’s just what you are doing. You lie, and you lie, and you lie again. And we’ve had enough.
The staccato sentences. The childish diction. The incredulous tone. The apparent shock that politicians might lie. It all suggests an organisation that is charmingly unworldly, and endearingly untutored in public affairs. The same is true of Archbishop Justin Welby’s interventions on refugee policy, which are always delivered in a coltish and halting cadence. This is Paddington Bear raising his voice for the first time, quiveringly, to speak out against divisive populism.
After these initial sallies, cute organisations can – if attacked – always retreat into the safe bailey of schmaltzy apoliticism: part of the furniture; part of the eternal pattern of English life.
Why is this so effective? It relies on a number of illusions and deceptions about what modern England is, and what these organisations are.
These bodies strike against the measures that one might put under the broad heading of Right-wing populism: feeble attempts to control the border; feeble attempts to disperse the roaming prides of newts that block HS2’s path. It is curious, then, that the rhetorical power of these attacks rests on an idea of British society in the 2020s that is solidly Little Englander. The notion that these organisations represent the ancient conscience of England relies on a certain picture of life outside of London: of fields, clipped and verdant, dotted with bowling clubs. Need I add the blousy, blue-rinse matrons? Of course, this is all nonsense. In 1968, the Kinks could sing of The Village Green Preservation Society with ironic affection, as something that was passing, or already gone. When John Major claimed that England was still the country of “old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist”, nobody believed him. The bowling club is now a drive-thru Taco Bell. The church is now a dogging ‘hub’. The village florist is now a vape shop. The society that produced these organisations is gone; they speak for no one but themselves.
There’s also a collective amnesia at work when it comes to the groups. As late as around 2010, bodies like the RSPB were used as a Clarksonian shorthand for killjoys and sneaks. And well-funded ones, too: powerful enough to play the perennial heel to Britain’s motorists, fox hunters, developers – and Jeremy Clarkson himself. This is of course still the case. We are reminded that the RSPB – to take one example – enjoys revenues of £158 million a year, with a substantial chunk of this coming directly from the taxpayer. It’s only recently that these groups have been able to conflate themselves with the Outraged of Tunbridge Wells, and so claim the narrative mantle of the knitting circle that took on Whitehall, and won.
So, what to do? Sure, these organisations shouldn’t receive public money. These streams have to be cut off. But this would take legislation, legislation takes time, and Paddington Bear and his confederates need to be dealt with right now. Those who do not wish for the RSPB to exercise a veto over their lives need a rhetorical attack of their own. Here are two suggestions.
These organisations pose as the embodiment of ancient English sentiments. From this deep cup, two can drink. Another current in our island story is the old hatred for the conscientious meddler, for the well-funded busybody. This feeling, taken very far, was what did it for the English monastaries. Use it.
A second clue might be found in a scene from the recent film Oppenheimer. This is when President Harry Truman loses patience with our hero’s qualms about the nuclear destruction of two Japanese cities, reminding him that he was the one who had to take the decision, and bear the consequences. We might say something similar to bodies like these. It is, ultimately, nothing to the RSPB whether more houses are built. They have the luxury of myopia; the people’s elected representatives do not. There’s a reason why we didn’t traditionally franchise out governance to sectional interest groups, especially those without even a crude financial stake in things staying on a basically even keel. Paddington Bear has no place in the councils of state, and should be shown the door.
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I have stated more than once on DS that as far as I am concerned once cash goes it is game over. I see no evidence suggesting I am wrong.
I agree with you HP. We are few though and they are many. Unless we have an Ace up our sleeve, we’re goonered. I continue to use cash when I can and luckily most places down where I live take it but go to London and you might as well be handing them flapjacks. The arguments against cash continue to proliferate and the main thrust of these arguments seems to be about the bother of cash, the inconvenience of it in some sort of Orwellian double-take because if the internet is down or the card machine not connecting then cash is the only convenient exchange for goods etc!! Although stamps now appear with Chuckles on them, I haven’t seen any coins with his head on them – this should tell us all we need to know!
Thanks Aethelred. I must admit that I have heard that Chuckles does not have his head on our coinage so that tells a tale.
(I know where I’d like to see his head.)
I always use cash. Fortunately, up here amongst the dark, satanic mills nobody is currently refusing cash. That I know of.
Good to know that cash is still alive out in the sticks.
The less I see Chuckles’ head the better I think! Better not think too much about his head actually, especially in view of his ancestral namesake!
Sorry to disabuse you both – King Chuck’s head is now on coinage, I got some from the post office the other day. Although both the PO chap & me said that after so many decades of Queenie, somehow it was just wrong….
Chuckles on a coin with a WEF background!
100% agree that it’s massively important.
“ask whether a libertarian approach could help”
I’ve got strong libertarian tendencies, but expecting a large powerful state to have such tendencies is pie in the sky and historically hasn’t been the case. Recent events suggest to me that liberty is most effectively preserved by making tyrannical measures logistically hard to enforce, and by the mass of citizens simply refusing to comply.
I think we’re well aware here on this forum, because we are not stupid (which “anonymous IT reporter” seems to think we are), that cash facilitates crime. Lots of things that make liberty safer also make criminals life easier, but I am more worried about the government committing crimes than I am about small increases in crime. Perhaps improving detection and much longer, punitive prison sentences might be a better approach.
My view on cash crimes, which after all tend to centre on tax avoidance, have certainly become more liberalised shall we say, these last four years.
Crimes with biggest financial impact all done by corporates and governments without cash.
Facilitates crime is a red herring. All so-called human or basic rights limit what government is allowed to do. As they’re universal, this necessarily means all criminals have them, too. And because they’re criminals, they might end up using them for criminal purposes. But since nobody, including the government, has a priori knowledge of which people are criminals and which actions will turn out to be criminal, this simply can’t be helped. Either people have rights. Then, criminals will have them, too. Or people have no rights. Then, everything becomes a lot easier for government, including dealing with criminals. Says the government, at least. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
Minority Report!
What is your evidence you are right?
CBDC’s will be part one of…
‘You will own nothing…’
Once the kinks and bumps are ironed out slavery is inevitable. It doesn’t take any intellectual prowess to work that out.
Yes the removal of cash per se doesn’t perhaps lead to disaster – it’s what comes after which is the replacement of money handled by private banks with a CDBC where all transactions go through (eventually) World Government. It’s another “utopian” solution that will lead to the opposite of utopia. I’m rather afraid that “Anonymous IT Reporter” is a closet utopianist who still has some misplaced faith in human nature.
Maybe we will end up trading in other items, out of ‘the system’ if you like. I am just being optimistic, it is Friday after all.
Yup check out Redacted on Rumble, look for the WEF video where they interview Whitney Webb on CBDCs for the latest on their push to eliminate cash. Whitney is a proper journalist, you wouldn’t get Peston or any BBC journalist asking the real questions that she does.
Thanks Ron.
Thanks for the link, Ron. I’ve watched it now & it is truly disturbing. We are certainly heading for the precipice like lemmings but we are being kept in the dark by the MSM except for forums like this.
Completely pointless article.
As I wrote in a past comment, most so-called ‘crimes’ involving cash transactions are more properly described as financial transactions the government doesn’t agree with, either because of tax evasion or because of violations of government rules on trades of goods, eg, buying illegal drugs. The government has an obvious interest in making such transactions impossible by assuming that every transaction is principally meant to violate some law unless proven otherwise, ie, forcing all economical transactions under blanket government surveillance and enabling the government to deny those it doesn’t like.
When everybody has the right and the ability to engage in economic activity without prior government approval, ‘criminals’ will obviously have it, too. But that’s similar to approaching people in the street: Absent Corona rules, that’s usually allowed. Hence, criminals can do it, too. Corona measures must thus urgently be reintroduced to fight crime. Says an anonymous IT reporter. And the answer is “Get stuffed!”. Emphatically.
Brilliant demolition of nonsense arguments.
I think the people who can get a bank account but don’t want one, should get together with those who can’t and want one.
Maybe betwixt the two groups something can be worked out?
The problem in Britain – and it is a problem – is thanks to welfare statism, many believe services are free. But every activity has a cost and that includes banking.
The banks made a rod for their own backs by offering free banking, the concept being the cash-float the bank would have in current accounts could be invested, cover operating costs and yield a return.
As so many expenses have increased over the years, this model doesn’t work anymore. Instead of introducing bank charges – the way it used to be – they have reduced services.
The answer is to introduce charges, so non-profitable accounts aren’t a loss, and those who prefer cash, which is expensive to handle, can pay an extra fee for this with banks and retailers.
There is plenty of shoplifting going on and it ain’t just cash. food, jewellery etc. I bought a car for cash yesterday, just over 2k….The first I’ve ever had delivered before viewing because Billy no mates has nobody to drive him to the garage! Because I don’t do online banking and the trader didn’t have a card machine, I just said I’d pay extra for the delivery providing the car is the condition that was claimed. So I had to drive 20 miles to my nearest Bank branch and because I know the girl who counted my money she asked “buying anything nice”….So I told her. Come to think of it, I wonder if she was obliged to ask because you hear a lot of stories of Banks asking what you’re doing with your own money.
CASH IS KING USE IT OR LOSE IT!
When I first started working I was paid weekly in cash. It was only since the 1980s that employers started insisting employees have bank accounts. And of course there’s been no non cash financial crime committed since that happened has there!
I am Treasurer of a small Not For Profit which, for very old legal reasons which we can’t change, is a Limited Company.
I recently tried to switch our bank account to Lloyds for various very legitimate reasons but without success. The application can only be made online and if you cannot comply with their requirements/enter data TO THE LETTER the application will be automatically rejected.
We can’t comply TO THE LETTER – not least because they require exactly 100% of Shares to be allocated and the Shareholder identified – and we have 19 Shares. 19 into 100 works out at 5.26 and about 8 other decimal places% each …… and they only permit 2 decimal places ….. so we will never be able to honestly comply with their requirements!
Another problem which couldn’t be overcome was their requirement for every Shareholder’s email address and mobile phone number to be entered. A number of Shareholders are very elderly and have neither …. so they couldn’t be entered.
Despite several conversations with several “the-computer-says-no” so-called customer service personnel the impasse could not be overcome.
In my personal life, I am using cash as much as I possibly can. I am part of the “awkward squad” which is doing its level best to prevent the imposition of CBDCs and a social credit system. I ditched my Nectar card several years ago, the only store card I’ve ever had: my data is not for sale for a penny or two off my shopping.