Remember what happened on 6 September 1997? No, of course you don’t, you’re a Salisbury Review reader. It was Princess Diana’s funeral. Cast your mind back. A time of mass hysteria, open sobbing in the streets of London, from English men as well as English women. And what about the bizarre spectacle of mountains of wrapped flowers, left on the streets of Kensington and Knightsbridge? Why would you leave lovely (and expensive) flowers covered with cheap cellophane hiding their beauty and preventing them being composted after they had wilted?
According to officials at the time, 10 – 15 tons of bouquets and thousands of candles and stuffed toy animals were left in various places in and around Knightsbridge.
6th September 1977 was also my younger son’s 21st birthday, celebrated as is usual with many friends and relatives. Yet I fielded telephone calls on that morning “just checking it is cancelled”, clearly expecting it to be cancelled. These came from people who had not come within 200 miles of Princess Diana, let alone known her. In previous ages in England the philosophy was “the show goes on” and did go on, regardless of personal tragedies, national disasters, even enemy attack from the air.
Being Salisbury Review readers, we did not cancel the 21st. but just the questions asked begged another question – why? The answer surely lies above, mass grief bordering on hysteria brought about by posturing, (virtue signalling in the new idiom), and the senseless worship of a beautiful, weak, self-centred and ruthlessly exploited woman who has almost become a latter-day saint.
Fast forward to last year. Millions of people up and down the country every Thursday night at 8.00pm stood outside their homes furiously clapping, even banging pots and pans, in a mass outpouring of thanks to NHS staff and workers in the health industry generally.
I find it hard to believe that it really was millions but a YouGov survey of 1664 adults (admittedly a stupidly small poll) reported that 69% had joined this government supported clapping demonstration. There are about 50M adults in the UK so YouGov thinks over 34 million of us took part in this empty gesture, serving only to advertise our caring nature. Or perhaps to claim to have such a caring nature. Either way a substantial section of our population thought it a good idea to express emotions so publicly.
For the avoidance of doubt, this clapping for carers nonsense is not remotely comparable with, for example, the 2012 street parties held up and down the country for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. These parties were not organised to exhibit publicly great patriotic emotion as was the public display of grief for the death of Princess Di and one’s overwhelming gratitude to the NHS.
No, they were organised purely for enjoyment, the camaraderie of company with like-minded English loyalists. Their aim was only to celebrate with near neighbours the 60 years reign of our wonderful and dedicated monarch. Alcohol, music and children’s entertainment were standard. Above all, they were organised as individual parties, not as one national public display of patriotism.
So far so good you will think. But hang on. Figures from the Local Government Association of England and Wales estimate, by using Road Closure Orders, that about 2 million people attended these street parties. Doubtless this estimate is more reliable than that of YouGov quoted earlier in this article but you get my drift. A further 2 million people are thought to have attended public community celebrations, so 4 million in total celebrated the Diamond Jubilee. Can it really be true that eight times more of our citizens advertised their mainly phony worthiness than did those who enjoyed a happy gathering of friends and neighbours, whilst thanking their Queen, (without saying it aloud), for her 60 years of service to the country?
In these intervening 33 years there have been many examples of our mass refusal to keep what should be private, private. Grief and gratitude are but two. Television presenters think nothing of inviting people afflicted by tragedies onto their shows to ask them how they feel. During the interview these presenters express their (probably fake) sympathy whilst the tears well in their victims’ eyes and their voices break in front of millions of viewers. Others, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry spring to mind, are not victims, although Prince Harry might be.
They get themselves on TV deliberately to display their care for the planet, the poor, persons other than white, other than heterosexual and the latest fashionable crusade against any perceived wrong to mankind. In doing so they bare their souls and publish intimate and damaging details of their family. This of course encourages their followers, a` la Princess Di, to think even the deepest and private feelings can be displayed in public.
If all this is true then we had better get a grip as a nation and return to our previous national traits. Stiff upper lip please, no more weeping and wailing and definitely no more emotional excesses in public and on TV. Keep calm and carry on.
Strikly come Dan Sin’. The weekly popular TV “legs” competition
“Not a single straight white man – the dream semi-final for BBC chiefs” (The Mail on Sunday, December 12, 2021, p.15. (Has the Metropolitan Police recorded this article?)
At this time of writing, the final contestants consist of two homosexual men, one of them of colour; a woman of colour with a leg injury with a white partner; and a woman disabled as “representing the deaf community”. The last mentioned has worked hard in musical competition, is pretty and charming, and did perform a trulu remarkable Argentine Tango which is by definition most heteronormative abd had to be got out of the way in a special discreet shadowed version (without drag) by the Lovely Gays. A Black male contestant with a Chinese partner did not reach the final.
The “Strictly Come Woking” version was described as a triumph, BBC chiefs being disappointed last year when a female boxer of color dropped out because of Covid, but “Stricty is reflecting Britain today with its line-up” by their deliberate “diversity” effort.
However, this concluding “reflection” of the British today suggests that our population consists roughly of Black 60%, Homosexuals 30% and Disabled 10%. Will the fantasy today be made into the reality of tomorrow?
That is nothing – I upgraded a friend to girlfriend on the day of the funeral.
I was told that I was lacking respect!
Just look through the terrestrial channel programmes on BBC & ITA on any evening. As someone said, it is largely a diet of trash and tripe, pap and porn, muck and money. The majority of presenters appear to be members of the minority LGBTQIA++ community and the majority of adverts appear to privilege the minority B communuity. The most irritating thing for me personally is the infantile screaming and shouting that routinely accompanies “competition” programmes. The best thing about the endless repeats is that the Cowboys still chase the “Indians”, or the real stories with good actors in old monochrone movies.
Just look through the terrestrial channel programmes on BBC & ITA on any evening. As someone said, it is largely a diet of trash and tripe, pap and porn, muck and money. The majority of presenters appear to be members of the minority LGBTQIA++ community and the majority of adverts appear to privilege the minority B communuity. The most irritating thing for me personally is the infantile screaming and shouting that routinely accompanies “competition” programmes. The best thing about the endless repeats is that the Cowboys still chase the “Indians”.
The rotting of the British Soul, indeed the rotting of most souls in the West, esp the Anglosphere, rather precedes TV. TV is bad for the intellect and one’s emotional well-being, obviously.
But the chief causes of Rotting of Soul reside in the various ideologies -oh let’s call them “ideas”- that insist that human beings are not responsible for their own lives.
According to some observers of history, and the history of ideas, and the arts, these “ideas” got started in the Anglosphere early in C19, even preceding Ol’ Marx and gang.
And by 1945, with the massive losses of lives spent in wars trying to halt bad “ideas” and their terrible consequences, the ordinary people simply had had enough of all the sacrifice business, and took to escapism in ways and on scales not previously imaginable.
And the extraordinarily rich material cornucopia of the decades since, certainly beyond the imagination of earlier generations of ordinary people, has made this escapism very easily attained and maintained.
Must add in this: The combination of massive inflow of low-skill people with anti-Europeanist attitudes and behaviors, combined with “free” healthcare and a legal system that now endorses and encourages violent criminality, and it’s yes, escape to TV-Land (and/or Drug-Land.)
And it is beyond the imagination of most observers to see how all this can remedied.
We should all get out on our doorsteps to give a big hand, a final clap to thank all the sacked and soon to be fired NHS staff.
Job done!
What sacked and soon to be fired staff? I thought the problem was lack of staff. How many NHS staff have left the service, and all its perks, to go out into the wide world of the free market? Few, if any.
For clarification, the nhs (and possibly other) public sector worker dismissals are in the pipeline. Oh, and I forgot to mention the 60,000 care sector non jabbees now dismissals well.
“Mandatory Covid vaccines for NHS staff: how should HR respond?” https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/news/articles/mandatory-covid-vaccines-for-nhs-staff-how-should-hr-respond#gref
I was cycling through a village when people suddenly all came to their doors and started clapping and banging pots and pans. At first I just felt a bit awkward cycling through it, then I realised that I was getting in the way of their photographer, who was trying to film their moment of high virtue.
At that point I realised just how empty and narcissistic it all was. It was never about thanking anybody, it was about cheap posturing.
Why don’t you mind your own business instead of bothering what other people want to do?
The problem with minding one’s own business, so to speak, by not goggling at the telescreen, taking drugs and getting drunk or believing what the papers say, that other people affect the society we live in – no man/woman/person/trans/whatever is an island.