TIERS OF A CLOWN

John Lydon once retrospectively referred to Bill Grundy as a very important member of The Sex Pistols ‘for one night only’ – and one night was all it took for his membership to deliver the goods. Following the Thames TV presenter’s live teatime altercation with the band in December 1976, they were dropped by EMI whilst he was suspended by Thames and swiftly dispensed with. Even if you weren’t around at the time, the incident has long been the stuff of legend and most are aware of it, so I won’t go into too many details. Nevertheless, it’s worth remembering that though the scandal lifted The Sex Pistols and the whole Punk subculture from underground cult to national phenomenon overnight as well as effectively ending the career of a man who was already fighting a losing battle with the bottle, the Met didn’t get involved. Those irate members of the public outraged by effing and blinding emanating from their tellies as they tucked into their egg & chips spurned dialling 999 in favour of deluging the switchboard of ITV’s weekday London franchise-holder, the party they actually held responsible. There were no police charges brought against Bill Grundy.

At the very dawn of the 1970s, one of Ken Russell’s typically outlandish and OTT musical documentaries for the BBC, ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’, had caused such uproar that the Estate of the composer it featured (Richard Strauss) so objected to Russell suggesting their man was a Nazi sympathiser that they took out an injunction preventing the Strauss soundtrack being played in the film, thus scuppering any future repeat screenings. Mary Whitehouse, on the other hand, didn’t appear to have any problems with the Nazi aspect, merely the sexual imagery; she even mooted suing the GPO for providing the electric cables through which this filth could be transmitted into the nation’s households by the BBC. However, despite the uproar, there was also no police involvement. Where am I going with this? Well, guess.

I don’t know why anyone aware of the man’s past would be surprised, but I’m guessing those who are surprised simply don’t know much about his past. I’m talking about our favourite showroom dummy, Sir Keir Starmer. Yes, fresh from taking the knee, the Labour leader has once more exhibited his anti-democratic, anti-liberal and unabashed pro-authoritarian credentials before the fools who think he’s doing a good job just because he’s not Jeremy Corbyn. When interviewed by Nick Ferrari on LBC, the question of the Darren Grimes Met investigation came up. Remember, in his role as DPP Starmer vigorously pursued the case against Paul Chambers, the man who responded to a cancelled flight by joking online that he intended to blow Robin Hood Airport ‘sky high’; this was a case the CPS was prepared to drop until Starmer the crusader for justice overruled it. And we’re not even mentioning his enthusiastic pushing through of the post-Savile ‘Victim’s Law’, the consequences of which hundreds of families across the country are still dealing with to this very day.

Asked by Ferrari if Darren Grimes should be the subject of a police investigation, Starmer replied in his best post-unconscious bias training, Dalek squawk – ‘There’s got to be a level of tolerance, of course, but there is a point, there’s a line that can be crossed, and it’s very important that when it is crossed that there is involvement and in some cases, prosecutions.’ Yes, Starmer is so desperate to be seen as being on ‘the right side of history’ that he will say anything his team of advisors programme into his robotic speech patterns; but here he is actually being true to himself, for I wouldn’t have expected Sir Keir to have expressed any other opinion on the subject than the one he gave. This reply was utterly in keeping with his attitude towards freedom of speech and policing the internet that he displayed when Director of Public Prosecutions – and to reluctantly give him credit, at least he mentioned the Grimes case; apparently, the BBC hasn’t mentioned it once, completely ignoring it altogether. That’s impartiality for you.

Hot on the heels of that, Starmer then issued his first clear opposition to the Prime Minister’s latest muddled coronavirus policy – the so-called ‘three tier’ plan that grades danger levels and leaves some parts of the country (mainly north of Watford) sealed-off from everywhere else. Naturally, this will do wonders for the Conservative Party’s appeal in its ‘Red Wall’ seats, though when it comes to lockdown Liverpool, Boris was hardly a beloved figure anyway. Having so far nodded along to the majority of the Government’s approach to Covid-19, the Labour leader decided it was time to strike out and put forward his own personal plan. He has called for a ‘temporary’ national lockdown lasting up to three weeks. Great idea, Keir; what do you intend to do when the three weeks is up, I wonder?

Mind you, his timing was brilliant. Andrew Hayward, a member of the Government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Or SAGE, to get all Bond-like) has already condemned the PM’s three-tier master-plan in favour of a full-on lockdown – or so-called ‘circuit breaker’ lockdown – to control the pandemic, because that obviously works. Anyone feel like all of this is beginning to take on the feel of an old fairytale or an Aesop’s Fable? It’s like all these supposedly intelligent individuals are running around trying to catch a cloud to put in their pockets or something. And, irony of ironies, the WHO – no, not the one with Pete Townshend and Keith Moon, but the World Health Organisation – now appears more in synch with the outlook of the Great Barrington Declaration.

In an interview with Andrew Neil, Sir David Nabarro, the World Health Organisation’s Special Envoy on Covid-19, declared ‘We in the WHO do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus.’ So, the WHO, which from the very beginning has been regarded by world leaders – especially Xi Jinping (not so Trump) – as the go-to authority on what to do with the coronavirus, no longer believes eternal lockdowns are the answer; but a member of SAGE and the leader of the Labour Party know better and want the cycle to continue till the end of time…sorry, I meant ‘three weeks’. Yes, the three-tier idea is just as futile as every other dead rabbit Boris has pulled out of his top hat; but three-tier opponents seem to suggest if all else fails, simply close the country down again and hide away until it goes away – which, of course, it won’t.

That recognised hub of open, diverse opinion and a friend to every viewpoint, Facebook, today announced it was clamping down on any sign of ‘anti-vaccine’ sentiments, which will no doubt please another dominant corporation like GlaxoSmithKline as it invariably gets ready to mass-manufacture and rush-release a vaccine whilst excitedly working out how much it’ll be charging each individual country for the privilege of using it. Yes, the relentless drilling into the people’s heads of the official line continues apace, building on the damage already done. A YouGov poll published yesterday found that 40% of the Great British Public felt the PM’s three-tier brainwave didn’t go far enough; 15% thought it had gone too far; and 19% reckoned it got the balance ‘about right’. Forty percent think Boris’s new policy hasn’t gone far enough?! How far do they think it should go, then? Well, let’s ask Keir Starmer. Just don’t forget to recharge him before you press the button to receive a reply.

© The Editor