They used to say that nothing lasts forever, but that was before the 21st Century, when things curl up and die like they used to, but then just rise up and stagger on in zombie form. Formerly huge popular successes get by, somehow, on their name and their past – what creatives call ‘brand recognition’ – and the ‘just enough’ thin trickle of interest that never totally dries up. The list goes on – The Simpsons, Star Trek, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And now, most regrettably, we can add Private Eye.
I have in my hand the latest issue at the time of writing. The glorious Craig Brown diary page, brilliant as ever, aside, it is desperately thin, tame stuff.
Obviously, no one has ever read the pages between the opening gossip and the skits – the tedious investigations, the ‘Rotten Boroughs’ bits, etc. Whenever Private Eye has gone anywhere near something I knew about or was involved in, its coverage has always been laughably wide of the mark, so I never trusted a word it said about anything else. These pages are as dull as ever, still presented in the cribbed unreadable small print, typeset in boxing gloves, which seemed ancient in 1981.
But the juicy centre comedy pages, which were hilarious not so very long ago? Gags that everybody heard on Twitter two weeks before, and a general tone of weak snark and of treating the world of 2023 through the eyes of 1993.
Private Eye was very funny in 1993 and its staff and readers were so happy then they haven’t moved on. Look, I also wish it was 1993. I had hair. I believed the Labour Party were going to be great for the country. My best friend was alive.
Why did Private Eye work then, and indeed from its inception right up until the descent of the ‘Age of Stupid’ that kicked in around 2013/14? Because it was cynical and horrible about everyone and everything on an equal basis. This is the only way political satire works – the ugly angle of Thersites outside Troy or Juvenal or Peter Cook. It’s the one art form which envy, spite and misanthropy make better.
When you’ve taken a position, by contrast, you’re just performing the social bonding rites of that tribe, which is deadly. And ‘Calm down dear’-ism – I won’t call it centrism because turning a blind eye isn’t centrist – is a tribal political position. You have to be able, at the very least, to laugh at your own side. There is not a hint of that in the issue I’m reading. Not a word on the weekly Hamas hate marches in the streets of London, or the laughable police response. Not a sausage on the never-ending rise of ‘trans’.
What is Private Eye’s side? It has a palpable dread of going near anything that might make it look gauche and low status. It toed the establishment line on Covid and lockdowns. It called Graham Linehan “unhinged” for objecting to the well-documented sexualisation and drugging of kids.
There is a whiff to Private Eye that everything will be fine, and that the British institutions still just about work, or they would do if someone decent and sensible was in charge, like Rory Stewart. There is not a hint that the country has been changed immeasurably and possibly irretrievably for the worse by a combination of uncontrolled mass immigration and bourgeois academic rubbish. Private Eye thinks Britain is the same old place. In a way, I envy them that.
Unfortunately, this makes it look, at best, Carry On Up The Khyber-complacent; at worst blind. And you really can’t have a blind satirist. It has taken, very publicly, the most banal consensus position on Israel’s response to the Hamas atrocities. Its recent hit job on Triggernometry was laughable for all the wrong reasons, like an Edwardian old buffer spluttering about those damned infernal ‘orseless carriages.
The trouble with what we call ‘woke’ is that it is tedious to satirise – because it is already ridiculous. A lot of its works are deliberately goading and deliberately silly, a dare on the public – a man calling himself ‘Mandie Monroe’ taking his employer to a tribunal, ‘anti-racists’ supporting Hamas. The entire point of them is to provoke a reaction, to confirm the low status of those provoked into criticism or laughter, and thus firm up their own cultural dominance.
This is very hard for comedians and satirists to get their heads around, particularly for people like Private Eye who are of the class that prides itself on never being visibly either angry or sincere. That’s a very sensible approach to take when your civilisation is ticking more or less happily along in the background. But it’s a dead loss when your civilisation is rapidly crumbling to bits.
Far comfier to stick your head in the sand. Comfy but not funny.
Gareth Roberts is a screenwriter, novelist and columnist for the Spectator, Spiked and UnHerd. His new book, Gay Shame: The Rise of Gender Ideology and the New Homophobia, is due out 2024.
Stop Press: Ben Sixsmith makes a similar argument about the decline of Private Eye, focusing on its centrist dad editor, in the Critic. Definitely worth reading.
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Somebody or bodies must gain financially from this.
Can someone here name them for me please?
Or is this all being done free of charge for the good of the world?
The WHO advised the ‘wrong thing’ at nearly every point of the Covid pandemic.
They missed the start of the pandemic; advised against restrictions on international travel when it might have made a difference, then pushed for draconian lockdowns when it was clear that they’d not help; they advised against the use of generic drugs which we now know would likely have worked; then pushed vaccines as the ‘way out’ when it was soon clear that they wouldn’t help control the pandemic.
But worst of all, now that the pandemic period is over, they haven’t had any critical analysis of their response but have instead announced that their performance was exemplary and that all the problems were due to countries ‘not doing what they were told’. The arrogance of the WHO is unbelievable.
The WHO acts as a tinpot dictatorship, with absolutely no critical self-assessment and absolutely no way for anyone to do anything about them. Really we should get rid of the whole of the senior WHO and start again, because their behaviour is now very worrying.
OK amanuensis.
Are they doing it for the good of humanity or because there is money in it for someone?
If so then who is it?
It’s for central bank digital currency & Jabs for everyone !!
Well for starters they are an organisation whose existence and funding depends on them seeming important to people, so anything that promotes that – such as fake pandemics – is a direct benefit to those who work in WHO – money and power, fame.
Secondly I suspect a lot of them are left wing collectivist types (or pretend collectivist) – utopianists who think they are involved in fixing the world, dispensing cosmic justice.
At the top level they will have connections with business, science and politics – common interests. They are part of the medical-industrial complex which has the potential to far surpass the lobbying power and money wasting capability of the military-industrial complex because while war is nasty and requires more effort to sell as “just”, “saving lives” or “public health” is like motherhood and apple pie.
Very nicely laid out.
Thanks. It seems so obvious to me I don’t know why the general public don’t see it. SAGE only exists if there’s an emergency, so what incentive do they have to take steps to mitigate the emergency or declare it over or say there wasn’t one. Ditto IPCC and “climate change” and every other special interest body that exists to deal with some supposed “crisis”.
Just like Oxfam, which was an Oxford charity for the relief of Famine.
Generally well intentioned if still a bit dubious in how they operated and with a strong whiff of Socialism.
When famines became rarer due to a little dialing back of warfare in the third World after the collapse of the USSR, and after revolutionary improvements in agriculture, Oxfam and similar “charities” realised that their jobs were at risk and repurposed their efforts on all manner of GangGreen concerns, avidly supporting Zero Carbon scams and Ruinable Energy fraud.
Thus actively promoting famines.
Power. Money will follow naturally to those who will then wield the real power.
And on the signatories side: evading responsibility for unpopular measures or outcomes. That one is particularly attractive to the British political class, above all to the hereby being outed as phonies ‘It’s all about sovereignty, mate! ‘ Brexiters, who got burned with it.
And as most of the people are now directly or indirectly dependent upon government money and as everything is now primarily moral and emotional, especially for the young, they were and are overwhelmingly just fine with it and with their resulting ever tighter enslavement.
https://www.takimag.com/article/electoral-economics/
The purpose of this Treaty is to strengthen control by the “elites” under their one world government.
Moving on from the Treaty will come CBDC’s and digital ID’S probably UBI and further tightening and enlargement of the 15 minute ghettos.
The intention is to create a slave class which will be controlled 24 hours per day. Ultimately as the slave class is deemed to have exceeded its usefulness it will be disposed of.
The “vaccines”, or deliberate instruments of murder are being used to slim down the current population. I suspect their initial target date for the first level of population reduction will be 2040 with a stability level set for 2050.
Who is the down voter, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus?
“They missed the start of the pandemic;”
Pandering to their vocabulary and “logic” does not serve our cause:
There has been NO pandemic.
Don’t fall for the narrative to such a degree. Travel restrictions would have made no difference, it was calculated that if all international travel had been shut down when anyone first decided a disease that kills 1.5 old people in a thousand all age, it would have slowed the spread by up to 1 week.
As it happens, I flew into Heathrow on Jan 28th 2020, from Singapore where Chinese New Year celebrations were in full swing, their Pandemic Hospital built after SARS 1 was in use for the first time, some temperature checks and handrail wiping when visiting museums, a little more mask wearing but nothing very unusual.
We did expect delays when arriving at Heathrow. Absolutely no interest there whatsoever.
We know better now but it did seem curious then that there was already panic in the Papers but no-one gave a shit at Heathrow
It involves both the International Health Regulations (IHR) and the pandemic treaty.
The IHR amendments don’t need parliamentary approval, but would affect health sovereignty of the nation.
Seeing how the WHO is funded, undemocratic and was wrong on multiple occasions in their advice on SARS-CoV19 this should not happen.
This debate has been running for well over 1 year and is reaching its final stages.
I have written to my MP to get this addressed in Parliament, for what it is worth.
“Seeing how the WHO is funded,”
Tell me how Myra
China and William H Gates (well known for his visits to epstein’s pedo island).
Yes, but the WHO also receives funding from national governments including the USA and UK, but certainly most Western governments.
Not much funding from China, but huge power and influence.
Hence Tedros’s appointment.
Billy Gates big investment and big influence. USA and Europe, much greater funding than China but little overt influence but a great deal covertly through the likes of Fauci and Farrar.
The Donald’s turning off US funding was one of his better moves.
I would be happy to see WHO blown to smithereens and the rubble salted.
WHO funding
Over 10% is from Bill Gates directly
8% from GAVI Alliance which is itself funded 30% by Bill Gates
Plus unlike most contributions from governments he actually pays up on time
So it is obvious that Gates has more influence than anybody else including elected governments
+ Farrar & Michie both work there now & that’s all you need to know !
Multi-millionairte communist, Susan Michie?
The same.
Will she have Professor Pantsdown Ferguson along with his super Computer Models?
I oppose it 100% but I can’t stop it !! Is there someone who can ? Doubtful isn’t it ! I think this is going to be the tipping point !!
Read this. There are 2 imminent threats and the Treaty isn’t even the main one;
”Anyone who is focusing on, or even discussing the proposed ”Pandemic Treaty” is distracting attention away from the proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations, which are a completely different set of proposals that will NOT need to be signed by any President or Prime Minister, nor would the proposed amendments require the advice and consent of the senate or Parliament.”
https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/reject-digital-enslavement
The DT has received significant levels of funding from Bill Gates, who has excessive influence in the WHO.
I strongly suspect that the real reason the DT is serialising Handcock’s WattsApp messages is to demonstrate that vain, publicity-seeking, egotistical, venal and scientifically-illiterate Ministers should NOT have control of pandemic controls.
It would be so much better if that was done by scientific experts at the WHO ….. experts, like Jeremy Ferrar and Susan Michie …. people who understand “the science” and “can be trusted” to do the right thing.
“Experts” who don’t have to bother themselves with the need to be re-elected ….. in other words they aren’t accountable to the people whose lives they want to control. “Experts” who most definitely aren’t far too closely associated/controlled and effectively paid by Big Pharma.
These messages are being publicised at just the point the WHO is pushing for the new Pandemic Treaty ….. and control of the world’s countries.
But I don’t get the impression that the DT is pushing for a repeat of lockdown. Or am I reading their features wrongly?
I don’t think the WHO or the WHO pandemic treaty are really pushing for lockdowns.
The opposite, in fact. It seems to me that their whole idea is to have a SWAT team of virus vigilantes scouring the globe for “dangerous” virus and to pounce quickly and decisively when they find out.
Pouce means very local isolation and then most importantly the warp speed roll out of vaccines to administer to the world population to preempt infection.
For that they need:
Lots of vaccines.
Vaccine passports.
Masking until people are jabbed.
Have you seen any widespread criticism of jabs, vax passports or masks?
Criticism of lockdowns helps in fact to focus people’s minds on the other stuff. As in, follow our instructions or we’ll all need to lockdown and we all agree that’s horrible, right?
I’m pretty sure that’s the game.
I admire your optimism that they would be content with that limited role.
They are keeping their powder dry.
This situation lays bear what a complete farce our system of democracy is.
The WHO is almost certainly going to pass the treaty and the UK is almost certainly going to sign up to it.
It involves our political representatives signing away sovereignty. It will affect the majority of people in our country in a substantial way, not immediately perhaps, but at some point.
And almost nobody in the UK has a clue it’s happening. If they did they and took the time to understand what it meant they would almost certainly oppose it.
We don’t live in a democracy or anything close to one. We live in an evermore authoritarian and tyrannical technocracy.
“The WHO is almost certainly going to pass the treaty “
So who makes the money out of it, Stewart?
The point is enslavemant of the proles …
No point in enslaving them if you don’t make money.
Who does?
What do slaves do?
The modern hybridisation of Cultural Marxism and Neoliberalism requires absolute control of a populations’ behaviour and freedom to speak out in order to preserve stability of the market. Enslaving populations, controlling their food supply and movement guarantees income for the existing hegemonies. There will be no more ‘disruption’, no more inconvenient ‘new kids on the block’; just a bland, controlled world where nothing exciting happens unless a few people kick against the status quo, at which point it will be easy to cut off an entire area’s food or fuels supply and rely on the panicked population to rat on the ‘rebels’.
Who benefits the most? The giant investment banks for finance, the internet entrepreneurs of the last three decades and Chinese manufacturers.
Correct.
Lots of people. Yes I get that the money is the driving force. Obviously.
But that’s not the point.
There has to be system for the money to capture. Our political class, the media, our bureaucrats, our institutions, all these people and entities that are nominally set up serve us do not serve us at all.
What we all need to wake up to is that there can be no freedom and no democracy with large institutions that concentrate power.
There is no point in bickering over the text of a pandemic treaty. There isn’t even any point in trying to fight the treaty itself. The entire system, the edifice is rotten.
Sadly this only gets fixed after things get a lot worse.
Money is perhaps not so much the main incentive as a combination of influence and proximity to the source of money. The Cantillon Effect – the temporal trickle down effect of real wealth from the money printing machine at the centre at the expense of those at a distance – can be used as a stick as well as a carrot. Who controls the machine controls the world.
Used wisely it can stimulate economies. In a rigidly controlled society though, the opportunity it provides to ‘pick the winners’ creates a system of rewards and incentives for loyalty, and its inflationary effect provides a way of enforcing compliance by keeping the wider population at a level of precarious dependence.
It’s nothing new, it just hasn’t previously been used to this degree in the ‘free world’ and on a global scale. CBDC and endless ’emergency measures’ will probably see to that though..
And part of the reason is the same as why our Beloved Civil “Servants” love the EU so much.
Let the EU and the UN / WHO do almost all the work. And then aspire to a few years working for the EU or WHO, on huge tax free salaries and massive pensions. Fabulous free travel perks and adulation from the Media.
What’s Not to Like?
Sweden didn’t show equity, they outperformed and thus must be brought to heel.
James Roguski’s been all over this for some time, but what he’s recently brought to our attention, which I’ve never heard of before, is this so-called ‘silence procedure’;
”Often the “silence procedure” is the last step in adopting or agreeing to specific text after the basic premises of the text have been agreed upon in previous negotiations.
Those who remain silent are taken to agree. Amendments were adopted in this manner on May 27, 2022.”
https://jamesroguski.substack.com/p/silence-procedure
Its easy to see how this is going. The One World New Order being driven by the 5th columnists in the civil service aided by the elected government minions, herding us like cattle into pens to be jabbed and controlled by unelected billionaires who despise the human race. We need a Revolution, a bloody one if necessary!
The political and media class are inherently statist. Brexit and wider populism, which they fear and resent for obvious reasons, have driven them deeper into this position than ever.
The EU, UN and other supranational organisations who draw their bureaucrats, leaders, crony capitalists and sponsored policy enforcers from this class, represent the ultimate borderless State, and will place their interests above all else. They hardly need any encouragement to offer unconditional support for their agenda.
If those of a centre Right political outlook cannot even be bothered to join centre Right challenger parties in large numbers what hope of getting them out on the streets for a ‘bloody revolution’? Is it not likely that if there is a big populist push back it is more likely to take place in a European country where the organisation, guts and determination needed is more likely to be found than in these Isles?
“Indeed, article 4 goes on to ominously assert that “previous pandemics have demonstrated that no one is safe until everyone is safe””
This is exactly the thinking behind the ‘zero Covid’ policy, which anyone with half a brain pointed out at the time would not work. As it turned out, it didn’t work, unless by ‘work’ one means destroy an economy, national morale, trust in any institutions, poison mental health and lead to a generation of children with developmental problems.
Consolidating and centralising incompetence in a demonstrably hubristic, unelected, unaccountable supranational organisation engaged in political horse-trading, boot-filling and empire building would seem to be a very bad idea. Great for national politicians though, for whom the opportunity to pass the buck when things get uncomfortable is golden.
the greatest lie told during covid – by el gato malo (substack.com) This piece suggests a different point of view i.e. that pandemics aren’t actually that frightening or dangerous. If we can all learn to laugh at the emperor’s new clothes and point out that viruses are un-isolated and therefore un-proven we may be able to turn the fear into courage to look anew at what we have been repeatedly told and asked to believe. A very good read.
Thanks, that’s an interesting article discussing possible underestimates of iatrogenic death during pandemics. It’s a pretty big claim and el gato malo makes some compelling arguments. I couldn’t find anywhere in the article that claimed viruses were ‘unisolated’ or unproven though. Gato malo explicitly acknowledges their existence and effects in the article:
”please don’t misunderstand: i am NOT arguing that covid did not kill anyone or at least pull forward some deaths that likely would have occurred soon afterwards shortening lives by weeks and months (but not years) and thus causing spikes in deaths.”
It’s the beginning of one world government, which China has been seeking for over a millennium. Once the Pandemic Treaty is in place, expect many more based on ‘equity’. This will likely involve harmonisation of taxation, UBI, digital currencies and mass surveillance. We’re facing global governance via treaty and the the leading country will be China through a mix of military might and bribery of Western politicians and businessmen.
I have written to my MP on at least two or maybe three occasions, so he is fully aware but and it’s a mighty but all he said he’d do is “keep an eye on things” yeah right. My worry is he a Socialist MP and judging by his “follow the party line” voting pattern and his boss’s preference for Davos Man I suspect he’d be only too willing to sell us out together with the rest of his cohorts.