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.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
KEY 5 min Update: Dr Peter Doshi * Associate Editor of the BMJ * – Ivor Cummins
WOW!
Doshi has played a straight bat throughout this fiasco. That he hasn’t either been cancelled or put on gardening leave suggests to me that the readership of the BMJ, who I believe are mainly front line medical practitioners, don’t disagree with him.
Here’s the press advisory that Sen. Johnson’s office presumably sent to many major media sources (as well as officials from the CDC and NIH). It shows who was going to be on the panel and what they would speak about. This panel includes at least one legitimate “whistle blower,” a flight surgeon in the U.S. Army.
Question: How many reporters attended this event and filed stories?
These reporters and news organizations do not want to publish the truth, or any comments from credible people who challenge accepted “truths.”
https://www.ronjohnson.senate.gov/2021/10/media-advisory-sen-johnson-holds-expert-panel-on-federal-vaccine-mandates-and-vaccine-injuries
This event should have gotten major media coverage. I know the senator’s office sent invitations to the press to attend (I posted the press advisory yesterday). I doubt any press members from mainstream news organizations showed up though. I certainly haven’t read any stories about the remarks of these panelists. BTW, there were a lot more panelists with interesting things to say, including an Army flight surgeon “whistle blower.”
Riddle: If you blow a whistle and nobody hear the whistle did the whistle really get blown? Or: Did the effort make any kind of difference?
Who is supposed to let the world know people are blowing warning whistles?
Julian Assange. Conveniently for them they had the foresight to lock him up so he couldn’t fulfil that role.
This is bombshell stuff wow. Very hard for Normies to dismiss; the tide is turning.
But it was dismissed because the press didn’t cover it. I’ve seen several links to “alternative media” sites that covered it. I haven’t seen any Washington Post story. CNN wasn’t there.
Yes it can. Didn’t our British citizens in America declare their independence from Britain in the eighteenth century? Oh, yes, war followed. And they won. And what about the southern states from the union in the nineteenth century. War again. And they lost.
Unilateral declarations are possible. Outcomes not guaranteed.
Without cooperation from the public authorites of this muncipality, the state of California will have to conquer and occupy it to enforce its laws there.
It’s a good start, getting an armed force to defend their independence.
In instances like this people’s belief in the right to self-determination is challenged.
The cognitive dissonance is often painful.
Who’s next: Republic of Macclesfield? Heptarchy of Hull? Bring on radical splinter polities! AKA plandemic civil war. Meanwhile belly laughs are heard from as far afield as China and Russia…
I don’t relish civil war because it means death and destruction and of many innocents but at some point, somewhere insurrection is I believe inevitable.
Just because one state votes or chooses to leave a national union doesn’t mean there has to be a war. The Soviet Union broke up almost over night with several new nations emerging with no bloodshed at all.
I’d be curious if one or more states seceded, if soldiers of the U.S. Army would go to those Staes and kill people to get them to stay in the union. Army officers who have left the Army have told me, sadly, that the remaining troops WOULD do this.
No divorces allowed in America apparently.
Direct democracy.
It’s the only way.
I think it will be fun for China to compare it to Taiwan.
“Newsom’s policies, however, appear to have worked and the state had the lowest Covid infection rate in the U.S. last month.”
A classic Groan propaganda report – straight down the tube from the Cabinet Orifice. Hold the front page! (Until we’ve licked up the shit)
Yeah, this article is complete bullshit and changing the facts to fit an agenda.
Of course we get this sentence: “Newsom’s policies, however, appear to have worked and the state had the lowest Covid infection rate in the U.S. last month.”
Has California had the lowest infection rates in the U.S. throughout the pandemic? As far as I can tell, they’ve always had the most draconian lockdown policies but until now (I guess) they’ve never had the lowest infection rate in the U.S.
So the policies are working now but for some reason didn’t work earlier.
Florida has FAR more obese and elderly people AND did and does better.
Go figure.
This lady, who I am going to call “Karen,” probably hails from non-rural sections of California.
Be warned though. This flight was heading to London. The man Karen was trying to get kicked off the flight for violating her rights – the man whose “oxygen” she was forced to breathe – is now presumably on the loose in London Town.
https://t.me/patriotlife/649?fbclid=IwAR1BWRnzxMnRanMC9vJXNuu2sjyMd-qMsc3ThDu8WMXxB4SjJm7HZZcbzz0
Looks acted.
Upon second viewing you may be right. If it is a staged event they spent a fair amount of money producing it. I wonder who produced it.
Even if it is actors working from a script, the scene depicted HAS and is occurring in similar forms across the world.
As you don’t see the rest of the aircraft, I’d be suspicious.
Yes. I’ve watched it twice now and see several things that don’t ring true. Dang. They probably got me. Still, I think the sentiments depicted – and Karen’s “lines” – capture the views of many.
I think that it’s a spoof, someone posted to that effect yesterday.
I suspect these Buttes may get fukked if they kick too hard against the prikks.
“Whatever they mean by constitutional republic you can’t say hocus pocus and make it happen”.
That’s rich.
The lunatic covid modellers masquerading as experts seem to think saying hocus pocus makes it so. Hence the Californian state must accept Oroville’s independence declaration, or recognise that if they won’t tolerate hocus pocus they don’t have any authority themselves.
“A municipality cannot unilaterally declare itself not subject to the laws of the state of California”.
Well it just did. There may be consequences but the declaration has been made.
Nothing new, here in the darkest South West we already have a republic…
the PRSD – independent coverage of culture, art, news and views
Maybe it’s just the date. But increasingly I’m thinking of 1605.
It’s been done before.
The Principality of Hutt River is situated 595 km north of Perth, Western Australia and is about 75 square km in area, consisting of some 18,500 acres of land.
The Principality of Hutt River is an Independent Sovereign State having seceded from Australia on the Twenty First Day of April 1970 (it is of comparable size to Hong Kong (not the New Territories).
The Principality consists of undulating farmland well covered in places with a wealth of shrubs and glorious wildflowers in season.
http://principality-hutt-river.com/
could soon get awfully crowded if people catch on…
Our healthcare system is about to experience a tsunami! Potential side effects of jabs include chronic inflammation, because the vaccine continuously stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies. Other concerns include the possible integration of plasmid DNA into the body’s host genome, resulting in mutations, problems with DNA replication, triggering of autoimmune responses, and activation of cancer-causing genes. Alternative COVID cures EXIST. Ivermectin is one of them. While Ivermectin is very effective curing COVID symptoms, it has also been shown to eliminate certain cancers. Do not get the poison jab. Get your Ivermectin today while you still can! https://health.p0l.org
Two States Of California
Lecture by Victor Davis Hanson said it all so many years ago. Available on YouTube.
Oroville? Never heard of it. Lived in California for 9 years.