The proposed appointment of Charles Moore, ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Vicar on Earth’ to head the BBC along with Paul Dacre, the left’s idea of what Lucifer might be like, as head of Ofcom, shows Boris has not lost his touch. These appointments, along with Brexit, will have consequences that will be with us long after Covid 19 is a footnote in history.
With the coincidental arrival of Laurence Fox’s anti cancel movement the two appointments should spell the demise of wokery, its works and its pomps. The success of a revolution depends on the electorate feeling they now have ‘permission’ to think thoughts which yesterday were considered utterly wicked.
Fox is that rather rare species, a film star who is not a political empty head, and the ‘halo effect,’ (people find it hard to resist believing that good looking people are not good) will ensure his success. He has already raised £5 million in donations. Let’s hope he makes wise use of it.
These events also spell the end of the ‘Boris has lost it’ myth. Emanating from Whitehall, this rumour is designed to have Boris ejected from office by the end of November latest, in order that a Remainer Tory can take his place and agree to the Brexit talks being extended by 12 months.
By the end of that period nothing will remain of the original agreement, and we will be a full colony of the EU.
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Check the Wikipedia entry on Baron Moore, an unmitigated hostile attack. He is even accused of “nativism”, a thought crime taking explicit definition. We stale, pale males used to call it patriotism, a high civic virtue.
Labels are not refutations.
As for black youth criminality, look at the now officially available ethnic categories of arrest and imprisonment.
Decades ago after listening to a Julie Gooding, connected to the then superb Conservative Research Department, note the leftist slant of BBC programmes, I began to collect evidence on this, using among other sources “The Listener” (one of several literary periodicals that sadly disappeared) and “Radio Times”. This material accumulated in a dozen large cartons of cuttings and other documents, but no-one including MPs whom I approached showed any interest. Eventually these boxes were destroyed beyond repair by floods that invaded their garage store. But others have more recently written a few slim volumes on BBC bias, policy and personnel. Nil desperandum.
The idea that the appointment of a Chairman or CEO can change the deeply embedded culture of large public sector organisations?
As an idea, it naive and idealistic in the extreme.
And the effect, if not perhaps the intention, behind expressing such an idea is to give good people false hope, to send ’em sleep, to provide succour to those who actually do control those public sector organisations -those who are working on behalf of Big-Statist, anti-Westernist, “equality and fairness” politicians (oh I’ll call ’em marxist) and their operatives throughout all institutions, and their clients in the general populace.
Scruton understood all this.
My omission from the above -I’ll add it now:
Those politicians and their allies in the tax-payer funded institutions, such as the BBC and throughout the civil services and education systems, and now also in big business, are greenist -anti-empirical greenists.
“The Guardian” has the knives out for Old Moore and his almanac fortune. He is said to be debarred from BBC chairpersonship because 10 years ago he refused to pay the licence levy in protest against the live-on-air bullying of the actor Andrew Sachs by Jonathan “Penis”* Ross and his friend Russell “from sex addict to spiritual messiah”** Brand.
Moore even once dared to ask about the reasons for exceptional misbehaviour of black youths and racial differences in talent. He has also written that Muslim immigration had increased communal tension and intolerance towards other faiths, and defended voluntary homosexual conversion therapy. Such archaeological personal opinions, shared no doubt by a large number of licence-payers, would hardly do as much harm to BBC impartiality as those of Hugh Carleton Greene, despite current protests from Sir Lenworth George Henry CBE and the organised LGPTQIABDSMZ+ lobbies.
The Woke Dictatorship picks off individual opponents one by one, from Tony Sewell and Noah Carl to Alastair Stewart and Laurence Fox. Pour encourager les autres.
*”Why do I say these things?” Evening Standard, 7 November 2008 online
** The Sunday Times, 17 September 2017 online
We recusants get everywhere. Its. It must be something in the wine, or I my case the innumerable Jesuit floggings, that turns us into Conservatives.
I am generally a proponent of optimism.
And I am grateful when others express optimism when I am not optimistic.
But my fate is to be realistic, it seems.
And so, here is what I know about these two phenomena:
1. The prospects for transformation to usefulness to society and promotion of human flourishing of a large organisation with a long-existing culture, embodied in tenured individuals, of an anti-empirical, self-righteousness which proclaims that everyone must be made equal by transfers of wealth and power to those who lack the talents and work ethic to fend for themselves, when the organisation is not subject to market forces, simply by the appointment of a new chairman or CEO -are bleak, bleak, bleak -oh non-existent really.
2. The prospects for success of a new non-marxist/non-greenist political party, beyond encouraging short-term optimism among the few, for the transformation of the political, social and economic order of the country -are bleak, bleak, bleak -oh non-existent really.
But I am optimistic that consideration, with due empiricism, of these bleak prospects can lead to the emergence of a critical mass of realists who volunteer to spend their lives and their assets to establish a workable social-economic order safe for the striving, contributing middle-classes.
I first heard of Charles Moore, the new (and first?) Baron of Itchyville, about 15 years ago; and as a fellow convert, I heartily approved his converting to the One True Church, which no principal of this organ has ever done so far as I know. Not even Sir R. I would like to read His Lordship’s Thatcher books, but I was saving up for Heffer’s biography, Like The Roman, about that other old fogey. It used to be on offer at AbeBooks for hundreds of $$$; but lo! now costs less than $100 hardcover. So nice when book collectors die. Then families dump everything their testators have spent decades building into respectable libraries (as I have done) at knockdown prices.
I am a left footer John Henry
We recusants get everywhere. Its. It must be something in the wine, or I my case the innumerable Jesuit floggings, that turns us into Conservatives.
This is excellent news, and confirms my reading of the 10n Downing Street runes that, while Covid 19 management is the everyday priority, the objective of Johnson is what he says on the EU-UK negotiations. That is the key to the UK’s future.
Much as I would like to share that view I look at the incumbent in 10 Downing Street and see a fantasist, a liar and a peculant fraud, who has installed his present courtesan and latest bastard in the seat of government whilst making war on our ancient freedoms and destroying our economy.
Incapable of strategising, a prey to every random wind, if Pfeffel has a role model it is not Churchill but Caligula.
Is there anyone to fill Roger Scruton’s shoes in relation to Architecture and Beauty?
Donald Trump, to his credit has already stolen a march on us with ideas for Public/Municipal buildings.
Whatever next? Myles Harris bring appointed as Chairman of the National Trust perhaps, whilst be oming part time editor of the Guardian?
One can hope….
IMO, our esteemed Doctor Editor is more needed as coxswain of the Dover Beach RNLI (Armoured Division).
I may be naive, but it looks to be promising and I now like to think that Boris Johnson has been affecting a draconian Covid 19 response that the doom-monger-remainers in the Conservative Party find hard to criticise in order to get Brexit through as intended. Gritted teeth time and we shall know on the 1st January 2021. Could this be the dawn of a truly conservative fight-back?
I do hope that these appointments are confirmed soon, if they are, then the fight back starts here.
Maybe Douglas Murray might be appointed Vice Chancellor at The University of Oxford, Owen Patterson restored to his position at the Ministry of Agriculture, Robin Page made head of Natural England, and Lord Trimble made secretary of state for Northern Ireland.
A hopeful sign, in view of Moore’s promising article on the “National” Trust in “The Spectator”. The fight back must have a clear idea and thorough grasp of the “equality, diversity, inclusion” problem, its origins, aims, methods of “agenda networking”, and the exploitation of migrant and refugee communities.
I recommend just one starter book for supporters of Moore and Fox: Michael William, “The Genesis of Political Correctness” (2016) – £14 Amazon – get it now!
I hesitate to ask, but are you also The Raven, from Leeds, one of the founders of the worthy CP&S website? The acronym CP&S is a common one (e.g: in my career – not a medical man or apothecary – I’ve often consulted the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialties) so I don’t believe that I’m impinging anyone’s privacy.
Dear John Henry,
I hate to disappoint, but no I am not the founder of the CP&S website.
Regards
R
Robin Page has been dead for years hasn’t he?
Page wrote an article for the CRT a few weeks ago.