INTERNATIONAL RESCUE

A decade or so ago, an ordinary member of the public whose job was either that of delivery man or taxi driver (his profession, as with his name, escapes me now) strolled onto the set of a BBC news programme and was inadvertently taken for a hired expert; roped in for a response to a story concerning big tech behemoth Apple, his absolute ignorance of the item in question and bewilderment with the surreal predicament he found himself in was instantly evident, yet he managed to create a moment of comedy gold that was repeatedly parodied for as long as its currency remained relevant. In a way, it summed up the needless emptiness of rolling news channels and their habit of pointlessly pontificating on every minor headline simply to fill the vast void of hours stretching out way beyond the point at which even the most casual viewer loses the will to live. The sudden accidental injection of humour into proceedings was a brief respite from the tedium though, had it not been picked up by social media, chances are few would have noticed it had happened.

The past few days I’ve received a few flashbacks of that amusing incident whenever I’ve seen Liz Truss issue statements on the Ukraine crisis; it’s almost as though she wandered into Broadcasting House to deliver Alan Yentob’s breakfast latte and was inexplicably assumed to be the Foreign Secretary; shoved in front of cameras and questioned as to what punishments Britain would be dishing out to Russia, Truss has the same air of utter cluelessness and absence of authority on the subject that was apparent in the confused countenance of the unfortunate gatecrasher onto the BBC News Channel. So far, no reporter has had the balls to present Ms Truss with a map of Eastern Europe and asked her to place pins in some of the locations of which she has recently betrayed her lack of geographical knowledge when it comes to the region, but I live in hope.

As the current situation is the kind of Godsend to rolling news channels that in theory prevents moments such as that already discussed from happening, there’s an endless succession of stories related to the big issue, one of which is a Kremlin spokesman attributing Russia being placed on nuclear alert courtesy of some clumsy comment on the part of Liz Truss. ‘There were unacceptable statements about possible conflict situations and even confrontations and clashes between NATO and Russia,’ said Dmitry Peskov. ‘I will not name the authors of these statements, although it was the British Foreign Secretary.’ That’ll be Ms Truss, then. The statements that seemed to have caused such offence have not been quoted, but take your pick. Liz Truss so far has been focused on bigging-up the economic sanctions not so much against Russia as a country, but against individual oligarchs; although she claims to have a ‘hit list’, she won’t name anyone on it.

At the same time, having been wined and dined by wealthy Russians for more than a decade and then repaid their generosity by allowing them to become embedded in the upper echelons of society with the kind of stealth China would certainly admire, the West appears to have hit Mother Russia where it hurts via sanctions. On the global markets, the rouble has plummeted in record time, sinking to an all-time low of 26% against the dollar. The US, along with the UK, the EU and numerous other nations, has barred leading Russian banks from Swift, a system which apparently enables the transfer of money to cross national borders with ease. The assets of the Bank of Russia have also been frozen by Western powers, severely reducing the access of its international dollar reserves; Canada has been quick to sign-up to this freezing of Russian bank accounts, though Putin’s support of the Canadian truckers has yet to be established. The UK has extended the freeze to all Russian banks, leaving many British businesses waiting indefinitely for money owed from Russian businesses; additionally, the UK has imposed restrictions on exports to Russia. The EU and UK have even been briefly reunited like a divorced couple reaching agreement over childcare, both issuing a blanket ban on Russian aircraft flying in EU or UK airspace. Meanwhile, having cut off its nuclear nose to spite its green face, Germany has been faced with little choice but to postpone the opening of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from the Motherland to the Fatherland. No possible response outside of dispatching Western boots on Ukrainian soil, it seems, has been spared.

However, there appears to be the possibility of non-Ukrainian volunteers assembling in International Brigades-fashion to take on the invaders, and it’s interesting that those stating their intentions to do so here aren’t being dissuaded by the Foreign Secretary. When quizzed as to her opinion of Brits queuing-up to join a ‘Foreign Legion’ of fighters prepared to take on the might of the Russian Army, Liz Truss replied in an encouraging manner that is a notable contrast to the official line on those who sought to do likewise in Syria not so long ago. She certainly seemed to suggest she supported anyone committed enough to the cause; asked if she approved of British nationals taking up arms in Ukraine, Truss replied, ‘Absolutely, if that’s what they want to do. That is something people can make their own decisions about. The people of Ukraine are fighting for freedom and democracy, not just for Ukraine but for the whole of Europe.’

Interestingly, Liz Truss’s support hasn’t exactly been endorsed by representatives from the Foreign Office, who aren’t offering similar encouragement – though they also aren’t doing their best to prevent such voluntary actions by threatening to arrest Brits returning from fighting in Ukraine, as the Crown Prosecution Service did re Syria. The Chairman of the Commons Defence Committee Tobias Ellwood shuffled uneasily in his seat when made aware of the Foreign Secretary’s support. ‘It seems nonsensical to encourage untrained and unequipped British citizens to head to a war zone,’ he said. ‘It’d be far easier with this policy if there was some form of NATO commitment, but the decision was made some time ago to rule that out and yet here we are endorsing British citizens to take up arms.’

Of course, there’s always the chance that any volunteers for an unofficial fighting force comprising outsiders could be viewed as little more than mercenaries with an unhealthy appetite for interfering in the affairs of another country in the most dangerous fashion. That said, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has already announced such a force has been formed, with recruits in the UK (including former British soldiers who are veterans of interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan) approaching the Ukrainian Embassy to offer their services. A website has been set up as a British recruitment platform by Macer Gifford, who himself fought against ISIS with Kurdish forces in Syria for three years; Gifford claims he knows of at least half-a-dozen British volunteers who have been tackling Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine alongside Ukrainian troops for a while now, and he says that ‘judging by how many Britons contacted me in the past about going to Syria, I can imagine hundreds if not in the low thousands of people going out to Ukraine.’

I suppose if you’re old enough to remember the last time Brits volunteering to fight in a foreign conflict wasn’t something that came with the threat of arrest upon returning home (i.e. the Spanish Civil War), some of the images shot by amateur cameramen of Russian tanks cruising down residential streets and crushing private vehicles – not to mention the drivers in them – could easily evoke memories of Hungary in 1956 or Czechoslovakia in 1968. Perhaps many imagined the end of the original Cold War at the turn of the 1990s had neutralised the possibility of the worst of recent European history repeating itself, though one wonders if a Treaty of Versailles-like grievance has been quietly festering in the Russian breast over the aftermath of the Cold War’s end from a Russian perspective ever since. Well, it’s probably fair to say that’s true when it comes to one particular Russian, anyway.

© The Editor

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PLAYING CHICKEN IN KIEV

The legend used to go that it’d be King Arthur who’d awake from his slumber to come to Albion’s aid in the hour of her greatest need; but there’s no real point him chartering a ferry from Avalon back to the mainland at the moment. After all, why bother when we’ve got Ben Wallace? In case you didn’t know, he’s one of those dimwit types Boris Johnson has a habit of handing a Ministry to (see Liz Truss), presumably in order to make himself seem far smarter by comparison. Wallace is the incumbent Defence Secretary, a post – like Foreign Secretary – that has a habit of receiving an upsurge in media coverage whenever the world faces one of its perennial crises. Now that the pandemic is so 2020/21 as a hot news story, there’s nothing quite like the prospect of armed conflict to get the MSM excited all over again, and they’ve been indulging in feverish speculation re the tension on the Ukrainian border for weeks now. For journos who’ll never have to fire a rifle in anger, the thought of covering a war is their equivalent of Viagra.

On the surface, Ben Wallace sounds like one of those Mark Francois types, whose idea of warfare – and Britain’s role in it – has been shaped by formative years engaged in repeated VHS viewings of ‘The Great Escape’ and ‘The Dam Busters’. Unlike the Honourable Member for Rayleigh and Wickford, however, the Defence Secretary’s military fantasies stretched a little further than the TA – he was a graduate of Sandhurst and a captain in the Scots Guards before entering politics. Yes, he probably wears Union Jack underpants, but one would like to think a little life experience beyond the public school/Oxbridge/Spad/Westminster conveyor belt would make Wallace a refreshing alternative to the tiresomely familiar professional politicians clogging up the Commons. However, we’re talking about a Minister in Boris Johnson’s government, of course; and one can’t expect a miracle such as the Defence Secretary not actually making a prat of himself.

Ben Wallace yesterday took it upon himself to give the troops a pep talk in the grand tradition of Henry V, albeit not on a foreign field but in the rather more sedate surroundings of Westminster’s Horse Guards building. As Russia is once again seen as the enemy, he couldn’t resist referencing the Crimean War of 1853-56, reminding the military personnel before him that Britain had ‘kicked the backside’ of the Tsar back in the day – with a little help from the Ottoman Empire and the French, lest we forget. ‘We can always do it again’, he declared before adding Putin had gone ‘full tonto’ (such an elegant turn of phrase). His comments chose to gloss over the fact that the Crimean expedition wasn’t exactly celebrated as a Great British victory at the time – largely due to a disastrous episode history will always know as the Charge of the Light Brigade – and cost a Prime Minister (the Earl of Aberdeen) his job. Wallace was sat beside Priti Patel when he delivered his rousing rhetoric, and the Home Secretary was – to keep the Victorian theme going – not amused.

Ben Wallace’s clumsy motivational technique hasn’t been mirrored by the Prime Minister, who is keeping a lid on his own gung-ho tendencies as he tries to play the serious world leader in the hope the Ukraine crisis will serve to sweep the ‘Partygate’ affair under the wine-stained No.10 carpet. ‘In light of the increasingly threatening behaviour from Russia,’ he said, ‘the UK will shortly be providing a further package of military support to Ukraine. This will include lethal aid in the form of defensive weapons and non-lethal aid.’ His Foreign Secretary, on the other hand, emphasised the sanctions being imposed. ‘There will be even more tough sanctions on key oligarchs, on key organisations in Russia,’ she said, ‘limiting Russia’s access to the financial markets, if there is a full scale invasion of Ukraine.’ Brave words from a woman whose Party’s coffers have been boosted by the generosity of numerous oligarchs in recent years, oligarchs that successive British Governments have allowed to buy up great chunks of our capital city’s prime real estate, not to mention bankrolling some of the country’s leading football clubs.

The prevailing mood in the West is more concerned with slapping Putin on the wrist via sanctions than indulging in the kind of giddy jingoism of Ben Wallace. There’s also an abundance of irony at play in the criticism of Russian aggression by Western leaders. Even those too young to have okayed Middle Eastern military interventions 20 years ago can’t help but evoke the words pot, kettle and black when they decry Putin’s incursion into Ukraine. To have Justin Trudeau join the chorus of condemnation is perhaps the richest irony of all.

As we all know by now, Trudeau is a man whose method of dealing with protestors who don’t think that highly of him is to freeze their bank accounts and even threaten to take their pets away; offering cash incentives to grass on anyone suspected of involvement in (or simply supporting) the truckers’ protests and promising heavy fines and house arrest for those caught posting anti-government tweets – well, I’m pretty sure Russia (not to mention China) would heartily approve of Canada adopting the time-honoured tactics of totalitarian Communist states in suppressing opposition and monitoring every move their citizens make. Pandemic policies or power grab? Indeed, was anybody remotely surprised to learn that not all of the emergency Covid legislation in this country will be repealed? Fancy that.

No, Vlad must look at the weak West’s response to his actions and…well…piss himself laughing. It certainly hasn’t made a jot to his decision to launch his long-awaited invasion today. But there was an inevitability to events one could see coming for a long time. His tried and trusted tactics of deliberately stirring pro-Russian separatist sentiments in corners of Ukraine he recognises as independent states served as a pretext for crossing the border. The Ukrainian Government has clearly lost control in these regions, he claims, thus requiring Russian troops to play the ‘peacekeeping’ card and prevent further civil disorder. That’s his excuse, anyway. Over the past 48 hours, Ukraine has been unsurprisingly plunged into a state of emergency, anticipating the full-scale invasion that has finally arrived; as an opening shot, one of Russia’s most effective modern weapons – the cyber attack – was unleashed upon Ukraine’s government departments and its banks, creating additional chaos before the physical conflict got underway.

Ballistic missiles aimed at major cities have accompanied the troop movement into the territory whilst the sounds emanating from the Ukrainian military claim the invading forces are being resisted, shooting down six Russian planes and four Russian tanks as an immediate response. Be prepared for much propaganda on both sides as the conflict unfolds. The Ukrainians may publicly call upon NATO assistance, though I suspect it realises any resistance will largely be down to itself. The West’s inability to repel Putin is a legacy of the very weakness Vlad has witnessed from afar for many years; chronic underfunding of the major European powers’ individual armed forces means they are all poorly-equipped to deal with the crisis, and the Western fetish for ‘green’ energy has seen similar underinvestment in home-grown energy sources in tandem with an increasing dependence on Russian gas.

Although not quite as excitable as Ben Wallace, on the eve of the invasion General Sir Richard Sherriff nevertheless told the ‘Today’ programme, ‘Absolutely there is a possibility that we as a nation will be at war with Russia. If Russia puts one boot-step across NATO territory we are all at war with Russia – every single member of the NATO alliance.’ Well, it’s happened, so I guess we’re at war with Russia according to the former NATO commander. Here’s hoping the Defence Secretary can lead our brave boys from the front.

© The Editor

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SAILING BY

Yes, it’s a bit windy at the moment – even if a few sheds ripped away from their Home Counties moorings don’t exactly suggest a ‘twister’ of the kind that cuts a devastating swathe through various American States every once in a while. At least the wind was once a friend to the sailor, though, providing what would today be called an eco-friendly fuel back in the age of the sailing ships that explored the globe and helped build the Empire. In a way, I’m a typical land-lubber in that I tune in to the Shipping Forecast for the romantic roll-call, but my personal experience of a life on the ocean waves has been restricted to a cross-channel ferry and a one-off fishing trip in a motor boat over 40 years ago. Perhaps therein lies the enduring appeal of one notable absentee from my occasional Winegum retrospectives on 1970s TV shows that constitute a high proportion of my DVD viewing time, one currently being revisited after a gap of several years – albeit not quite as many years since it pioneered the Sunday evening pre-watershed drama slot that has subsequently become home to ‘Antiques Roadshow’.

Unless it’s of the sugar-coated ‘Call the Midwife’ variety, the big money splashed out on BBC drama is now channelled into series very much aimed at an exclusively adult audience. Pre-watershed, the post-nuclear family – in all its numerous permutations – has to settle for the output of actors and writers who still look and sound like they belong in the am-dram wasteland of afternoon soaps. Perhaps the change in viewing habits and the increasingly unlikely scenario of all age groups sitting down to watch a programme together at the same time has led to this sorry state of affairs. Not so fifty years ago, when standards were extremely high across the schedules and a series intended for every member of the household was not some throwaway melodrama forgotten as soon as the closing credits rolled, but a compelling saga boasting actors and writers of a calibre comparable to anything aired later in the evening.

Created by experienced television writer Cyril Abraham, ‘The Onedin Line’ spanned almost a decade, setting sail in 1971 and finally dropping anchor for good in 1980. Only three members of the original cast lasted the voyage, though one of them was the leading man of the series, an actor previously famed for more comic portrayals. However, as when Jon Pertwee proved himself a more than capable action hero upon donning the flamboyant ensemble of the third Doctor Who, Peter Gilmore commanded such a charismatic dramatic presence when strolling the deck as James Onedin, it was hard to believe this was the same man who’d ogled Barbara Windsor in ‘Carry on Camping’. As a character, James Onedin is arrogant, obstinate, brash and belligerent, a risk-taking gambler when it comes to business, and a born fighter – essentially in possession of all the qualities that could be found in every real-life self-made man who rapidly rose through the ranks in Victorian society because he knew how to make money.

James Onedin emanated from shop-keeping stock, his father being a chandler by the Liverpool docks; like many a young man at the time with a craving to see beyond his narrow horizons, the lure of a sailor’s life was too much of a temptation for Onedin and he left his pompous, penny-pinching brother Robert to inherit the family business. Taking the king’s shilling as a soldier or starting one’s working life as a cabin boy in the merchant navy were more or less the only options open to those from humble origins if one wanted to see something of the world; and for all its dangers, the sea was a more attractive prospect than the foreign field of conflict. The Industrial Revolution had opened another door for the entrepreneurial working-classes and James Onedin’s desire to emulate the wealthy ship-owners employing him as a captain is where we join the story; eager to found his own line, he eyes a ship for sale, though his efforts to negotiate with the retired old soak selling it flounder until Captain Webster’s daughter Anne makes James an offer: he can have the ship if he marries her. To the shock of his family, the unsentimental Onedin agrees to what he himself sees as a purely business arrangement.

Anne Onedin is played beautifully by Anne Stallybrass (later to become Mrs Peter Gilmore). The ‘Plain Jane’ left on the shelf who seizes her last opportunity for marriage by including herself in the sale of her father’s ship faced a fate common to many women at the time, yet against the odds a genuine affection swiftly develops between the unlikely couple. Anne becomes James’s conscience, curbing his often fiery temper and forcing him to moderate his occasionally uncaring attitude to those around him; she rapidly wins over the sceptical Onedin family and also finds favour with James’s long-term second-in-command, the gruff, no-nonsense Captain Baines. Baines (played by veteran whiskered thespian Howard Lang) is one of the era’s most memorable TV characters as the plain-talking old sea dog with a stronger moral code than Onedin himself. Along with Jessica Benton as James’s flirty sister Elizabeth, Baines helps give the series its dramatic colour, elevating it above the cast of cardboard cut-outs and Identity Politics ciphers that pepper today’s primetime equivalent.

Elizabeth Onedin eventually rises through the ranks with a speed that often exceeds that of her elder brother. After an ill-fated marriage to the son of a rival shipping magnate, she inherits a competing line to the Onedin one and then finally marries the man who impregnated her out of wedlock, Daniel Fogarty. When he is gradually honoured for his charitable works, she becomes Lady Fogarty, though her wandering eye for a bit of rough (usually in possession of facial hair) never wavers.

As the series moves on, the years pass (1860 to 1886 is the actual timeline covered). In the beginning, steam ships are an expensive experimental novelty; by the end, the characters are employing the telephone as a tool of communication, and politics of the time occasionally intervene, such as the American Civil War or the occupation of Paris by the Communards; it is this gentle albeit not intrusive social history element that gives ‘The Onedin Line’ an added appeal. For example, I’d never have known guano (i.e. bird-shit) had once been such a valuable commodity as fertiliser if it weren’t for ‘The Onedin Line’. The passing of time also enables a ‘Forsyte Saga’ aspect to develop as the offspring of the original Onedin dynasty move centre stage in the later series, becoming major characters in their own right.

As with any long-running drama, a degree of repetition does begin to creep in as the series progresses. James routinely loses a fortune, but always manages to make it back again. A wealthy villain regularly moves into town and befriends various members of the Onedin family in order to ruin our hero and seize control of the shipping empire – a generic character played in different series by the likes of Ed Devereaux, Warren Clarke and Frederick Jaeger; and for all his obsession with profit, James Onedin proves himself to be no slouch where the fairer sex are concerned. Following the genuinely moving (and somewhat premature) death of Anne in childbirth, Onedin eventually marries his daughter’s nanny Letty (played by Jill Gascoine) and takes a new bride in the shape of the exotic Margarita come the final series when Letty passes away off-camera (whilst Gascoine crossed channels to front ‘The Gentle Touch’).

Dismissed by some as little more than a costume drama soap, ‘The Onedin Line’ has considerably more to offer than the usual, tiresome litany of ‘issues’ as it documents the fierce competitive circles 19th century empire-builders moved in and the effect they had on their nearest and dearest. A compelling cast of characters and the never-dull drama of the high seas rarely had a more fitting outlet than this archive gem.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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FOUL LANGUAGE

Doctor Johnson may have had a hell of a task on his hands in attempting to chronicle the multitude of words comprising the English language over 200 years ago, but even he would’ve baulked at the task of defining words in the dictionaries of the 21st century. After all, the lexicon has been so twisted and skewered by (amongst others) politicians providing their own unique, upside-down interpretations to cover their corrupt backs that nobody is quite sure what certain words officially mean anymore. The dictionary entry for the word woman may well now provide the 4+4=5 description of a chick with a dick, whereas an actual woman might be found under ‘birthing person’, ‘chest-feeder’, ‘person who bleeds’ and so on. Likewise, the word racist has become obligatory to describe anybody who challenges the consensus, almost ceasing to have anything to do with someone who can’t see beyond the colour of another’s skin – and, of course, the inability to do so has now been reinstated as the legitimate mainstream policy on race, anyway.

Similarly, the old-school trend of nicknames that describe the opposite of a person’s most distinctive characteristics would seem to be in the doldrums today bar one notable exception. In the grand tradition of an outlaw built like a brick shithouse being known as Little John, the word ‘liberal’ has been so subverted over the past decade that it’s now attached to the most illiberal, intolerant and authoritarian people one could ever wish to avoid. Unfortunately, many ‘liberals’ are hard to avoid because the worst of them tend to be in positions of power. Abusing the meaning of a word that used to embody an ideology today’s so-called liberals are sorely lacking, the wolves who wrap themselves in liberal clothing have had their true colours and their true intentions exposed like never before during the pandemic; and what’s been especially interesting is that they’ve not made any attempt to hide their illiberal natures once laid bare before the global glare because they’ve simply shifted the goalposts. Sure, the justification has been that each fresh curb of civil liberties is being done for the public’s own good, yet they’ve overstretched their authority with the kind of enthusiastic relish that would shame the most dictatorial despot whose regime is of the sort Western powers were once fond of changing.

At the height of the coronavirus panic in the UK, it was the ‘liberal’ Labour Party that was screaming for far more draconian laws and restrictions on the public than even the less-than liberal Tory Government was prepared to introduce; and over in the colonies, the incursion of the state into the private sphere via the sham of ‘saving lives’ has highlighted the illiberal reality of two world leaders who were once celebrated in liberal circles for their anti-Trump, touchy-feely brand of politics – New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern and Canadian PM Justin Trudeau. The hideous Ardern has been discussed on here many times before, but the smarmy creep who seems to use the American Psycho of Brett Easton Ellis’s controversial 80s novel dealing with a yuppie serial killer as his style model has exceeded his sinister smiling soulmate of late by taking the North Korean form of governance imposed with such glee during the pandemic and extending it into crushing any opposition to his rule – particularly if it emerges from the proles.

The hypocrisy at the heart of the metropolitan political class in its ‘liberal’ guise is never better exposed than when challenged; name-calling via the same old lazy insults is the default response for an elite that have no capacity for debate because they are ideologically bankrupt. They’ll just stick their fingers in their ears and scream ‘racist’. Trudeau himself fell back on precisely that kind of dangerous rhetoric in the Canadian Parliament this week. Confronted by enraged MPs appalled at his state-of-emergency response to the ongoing truckers’ protests, Trudeau had nothing in his arsenal but the usual tired weapons. ‘Conservative Party members can stand with people who wear swastikas,’ he whined. ‘They can stand with people who wave the Confederate flag.’ In other words, if you disagree with the actions of your government and oppose the policies of the Prime Minister in suppressing dissent, you are not entitled to that opinion unless you’re prepared to accept that such an opinion means you’re a fifth columnist.

Like the truckers, Extinction Rebellion can prevent people from getting to their jobs, yet the SJWs masquerading as police will dance with the latter on the pavement rather than batter them; BLM/Antifa can torch a city centre and inflict anarchy and mayhem on the lives of law-abiding citizens, only to have the MSM portray the carnage as a ‘mostly peaceful protest’ as they take the knee in solidarity; and 17 million people can vote in a democratic referendum against the advice of their political overlords and they are denounced as bigoted white supremacists, twisting the actual meaning of those words and making it impossible to distinguish between the genuine article and the simple protestor because the descriptions have been rendered meaningless. Basically, if you have the right opinions you have carte-blanche to do as you please; if you have the wrong ones and – importantly – if you don’t obey the middle-class ruling class, then you’re the scum of the earth and it’s utterly legit to silence you with whatever undemocratic means the ruling class see fit to use.

Justin Trudeau has taken this approach into disturbing new areas this past week by proposing that anyone donating to the fund supporting the protesting truckers will have their bank accounts frozen; yes, you heard right. The kind of sanctions once reserved for Al-Qaeda terrorists – and usually with great reluctance at that – have been applied to those supporting a grass-roots opposition to Trudeau’s increasingly totalitarian attempts to keep pandemic policies going. This is a significant (and worrying) development because – however OTT and inhumane some of the restrictions introduced during the pandemic were – there are no sound grounds to use such powers in order to simply silence opposing voices once out of the Covid woods. This is an almighty abuse of authority entrusted by democratic means.

Any genuine liberal who might have voted for Trudeau because he wasn’t a Conservative should be able to see through this shit, realise what’s being done in their name, and be rightly outraged. But so relentless has the propaganda campaign been in demonising opposition and reinforcing power by smearing said opposition as ‘enemies of the people’ that the gut instinct in the genuine liberal now is to see all opposition as every racist, right-wing ‘phobe’ in the contemporary dictionary. How long before Trudeau’s desperate attempts to cling on are manifested as denying supporters of the protests access to supermarkets or healthcare or education or employment? Even Mrs Thatcher would’ve hesitated at introducing such legislation at the height of the Miners’ Strike, however much she might have fancied it.

I dunno. Maybe the word liberal and all the admirable aspects it is supposed to encompass was only ever a convenient smokescreen to hide the fact that many elements of the Left have always been as censorious, pious and zealous as the worst of the Right; it’s just when the Right is in the ascendency and has the power to exercise its most extreme tendencies, genuine liberals are in sore need of an opposition and the Left is understandably painted as the humane alternative. However, turn the tables by handing power to the Left and one sees the identical tendencies eventually emerge. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. One only has to look at what an unprecedented worldwide crisis lifted the lid on where liberal leaders are concerned. But perhaps power just does that to everyone who grabs it, whatever archaic label they see fit to claim.

© The Editor

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NO SWEAT

The best part of 20 years ago I recall catching a snippet of a ‘documentary’ about perma-tanned harpies preying upon young footballers at the kind of social gatherings that so excite the authors of online headlines. None of those interviewed on camera expressed any signs of victimhood and were fairly brazen re their intentions when approaching said sportsmen. Not that they were a new breed, mind; had they been around 30 or 40 years earlier they’d have behaved the same around rock stars, who were the footballers of their day. Rock mythology of the 1960s & 70s is abundant with the user-names of groupies who were as much a fixture in the hotel rooms of the era’s musical aristocrats as the TV set poised to be hurled through the window; even though their roles reduce them to anecdotal footnotes in the overall story of cultural conquest, it’s something they themselves don’t appear unduly concerned about (if their kiss-and-tell autobiographies are to be believed, anyway).

Uncomfortable as it may be for contemporary commentators to accept, the fact is that some young women in their late teens and early 20s are predatory when it comes to famous, wealthy men – however physically unattractive, charmless and retarded such men might be. They take the commonplace craving for a man who will provide them with financial security to the max, pursuing their intended target with a ruthless determination that says as much about their own absence of probity as it does the moral compass of their intended. Therefore, should anyone really be surprised that the prospect of sleeping with a member of the British Royal Family might be regarded as an impressive notch on the bedpost of such a character? The sob story of Virginia Giuffre is a case in point.

Had any genuine non-consensual sex between the-then 17-year-old American and the Prince taken place, one assumes no out-of-court settlement would have sufficed; said ‘victim’ would have rejected a monetary package and would have demanded her day in court, to prove once and for all that she had been subjected to a bona-fide sexual assault for which the perpetrator being named and shamed was belatedly punished. As we all now know, however, Ms Giuffre (or her legal representatives) has accepted a payment from the Duke of York amounting to between £7.5 and £12 million. The result of this field day for the legal profession is that both parties can claim a hollow victory – Ms Giuffre playing the ‘MeToo’ card and receiving a pay-out that implies her alleged abuser has something to pay out for, and Prince Andrew sweeping the whole sordid business under the carpet with a handsome donation to the Giuffre hush fund.

It’s telling that the main topic to arise from the entire grubby affair is the source of the settlement paid out by the Queen’s favourite child. Ever since his ill-advised TV grilling by Emily Maitlis in 2019, Prince Andrew has undergone a humiliating financial dressing-down; his days as a ‘working royal’ came to an abrupt end following his televised summit meeting with the ‘Newsnight’ hostess, when his delusional arrogance was exposed to the nation and his numerous military titles were quietly removed as a consequence. The truth of his association with the disgraced, deceased pederast (not paedophile, despite the MSM’s tiresome assertion) Jeffrey Epstein has forced him into a grovelling apology, publicly disassociating himself from the glorified pimp and his effective ‘Igor’ Ghislaine Maxwell in order to save his own skin. The fact that his equally desperate ex-wife Sarah Ferguson has done likewise as she attempts to distance herself from the man who loaned her £15,000 in 2012 to pay off a debt amounts to jack shit in the eyes of HM’s subjects, who are being encouraged to feel aggrieved that their taxes are being spent to bail out Brenda’s son. And Andrew’s own income doesn’t necessarily paint a portrait of penury.

His Sunninghill Park Windsor residence – a wedding present from Her Majesty in 1986 – was sold-off through an offshore trust courtesy of the good old British Virgin Islands for £15 million in 2007; he also receives a Royal Navy pension of something in the region of £20,000 a year as well as a stipend from the Duchy of Lancaster revenues. However, the fact his post-Maitlis reduction in income (a loss of around £250,000) has cost him dear perhaps leads to speculation that Brenda herself will have to raid the piggy bank in order to cover Andrew’s legal fees and/or expenses for dining out with his daughters in Woking. Of course, the Queen’s income itself is a well-documented and endless source of fascination for Fleet Street; the thought that Brenda might be forced to root around her purse to fund Andrew’s pay-off to Virginia Giuffre is something which we are supposed to be getting hot under the collar about, though I suspect we’ve all known individuals whose mothers routinely come to the rescue of when indiscretions committed by their precious boys need burying. A current ITV series on the Krays has served as a reminder of how some mums will always turn a blind eye to their offspring’s activities if they contradict the perfect picture the matriarch cherishes in her head.

Mind you, Brenda has enough to worry about where her ageing sprogs are concerned; the first media missive launching her Platinum Jubilee year may have been an attempt to finally lay to rest any lingering Cult-of-Diana resistance regarding the late Saint’s replacement in the marital bed, yet any concessions to Queen Camilla have been somewhat overshadowed this week by the news that police are embarking upon a ‘cash for honours’ investigation into Brian’s charity, the Prince’s Foundation. His ex-valet was chief executive of the Foundation until last November, when he was reported for allegedly having offered an honorary knighthood to a Saudi citizen. Although HRH is not directly involved with the running of the charity, the news that Inspector Knacker is investigating an organisation of which he is president – under the Honours (Preventions of Abuses) Act 1925 – means another unsavoury story encircling a leading member of the House of Windsor threatens to deflect attention from Brenda’s 70 years on the throne.

In some respects, reaching an out-of-court settlement means ‘the firm’ will be spared the further embarrassment that would undoubtedly have arisen had the Duke of York been let loose in a US courtroom. His old man certainly couldn’t be relied upon to avoid saying the wrong thing in public, but Andrew’s capacity for putting his foot in it is now recognised as even more potentially disastrous. The Emily Maitlis interview was a sublime example of just how clueless he is when it comes to the huge divide between his own perception of himself and how he is perceived by the general public. From the pizza anecdote to the claim he is incapable of sweating, Andrew’s attempts to salvage a reputation damaged via his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein failed spectacularly and reduced him to a laughing stock. The fact he expressed no regrets over the Epstein connection during the Maitlis interview – something he has now finally backtracked on – didn’t help either.

As Ghislaine Maxwell is left to rot in gaol as the sole can-carrier for Epstein’s sex-trafficking empire, Prince Andrew may have evaded a similar fate, yet his association with such a sleazy pair is something that has not only cost him (or his ma) financially; it has also fatally scarred him as a public figure probably for life now. A token offer of a donation to support victims of sex trafficking has been received with both scepticism and outright opposition by charities, though Andrew’s advisers have no doubt viewed such a gesture as one of the few remaining avenues with the faint prospect of redemption left open to him. But it’s too late, anyway; the damage has been done and it seems pretty permanent. Even if he isn’t a ‘nonce’, the fact a sizeable chunk of the public now think of him as such is a belief from which there is no going back. If you come across as an already-unlikeable individual and then have that label attached to you, it’s pretty much over.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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REWRITE AT TIFFANY’S

Taking a break from all online activity for several days can be a bit of a gamble. Hell, how was I to know the head of the Met would be belatedly pushed before she jumped in my absence, thus leaving this here blog bereft of a swift post-mortem on a useless individual who will henceforth be sailing off into the sunset on a handsome retirement package as well as the inevitable seat in the Lords as Baroness Dick of Head within a year? Mind you, it could’ve been worse; it could’ve been Boris, and I would therefore have been denied an instant obituary to line up alongside those of David Cameron and Theresa May. Whilst the PM is doing his best to keep a low profile following his schoolboy-apologising-to-the-headmaster grilling in the Commons last week, Fleet Street’s ongoing fascination with the woman who currently has ownership of his balls shows no sign of abating, though ‘Carrie Antoinette’ (I can’t claim credit for that one, alas) has a limited shelf-life that simply serves to keep the saga running whilst the Tories decide whether or not any suitable replacements are prepared to trigger a leadership contest.

As is the case during this hysterical, newsworthy-for-24-hours era – whereby one favoured headline has to be pored over relentlessly in sensationalistic, speculative fashion for a day before being hurriedly superseded by the next (lest the viewers’ collective attention span expires) – the mortal remains of Cressida Dick have already been gutted by the MSM to the point whereby any further dissection of them could feel like exhuming Sgt Dixon’s cadaver. At the same time, the tense situation along the Ukrainian border, which was discussed here when it began to boil over a couple of weeks back, is a subject that any rushed analysis of could date within hours; probably best to come back to it when what everyone is expecting to happen actually happens. With this in mind, I’ll momentarily linger on a growing pop cultural trend I noticed has moved on into dubious new areas.

In the face of joyless Puritans permanently on the lookout for something to remove from the history books, some artists have been issuing preemptive strikes. Over the last few months, ‘Brown Sugar’ has been dropped from the Stones’ set-list after half-a-century and Elvis Costello has exercised self-censorship re ‘Oliver’s Army’ before the serial cancellers beat him to it. It’s a sad state of affairs that artists feel they themselves have to act as Ministry of Truth employees for fear that the artless will do it for them without asking, as each apologetic compromise to the unforgiving consensus earns them no stay of execution. After all, there is no concept of redemption in the new religion; once damned, one is damned for eternity. Much better to adopt the stance of Woody Allen’s character in the superb 1976 movie set during the McCarthy era, ‘The Front’; called to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee, Allen declares he doesn’t recognise the authority of the Committee to interrogate him and abruptly exits by telling them to go f*** themselves.

Oh, for a brave soul to do likewise today. Joe Rogan has blotted his copybook somewhat by issuing what amounts to a half-arsed apology, something that will eventually be seen as an unnecessary olive branch held out to those whose only response will be to set fire to it. As has been rightly pointed out over the past week, sexual misconduct allegations will be the next weapon unleashed from the Woke arsenal if accusations of retrospective racism have proven unsuccessful. It’s a familiar contemporary pattern that is as predictable as night following day now; a minor employee will allege Mr Rogan touched her inappropriately ten years ago before too long and the demonisation will be complete. Therefore, the artist doesn’t need to humiliate himself when confronted by the 21st century’s McCarthy militia, for the militia will proceed regardless – and it has been hard at it for a long time.

Whether the removal of gollywogs from Enid Blyton books, the disappearance of Paul McCartney’s cigarette from the front cover of ‘Abbey Road’ or, of course, the ‘Top of the Pops’ revision that tells us Gary Glitter or Jimmy Savile had no part to play in pop culture beyond allegedly abusing underage girls on an industrial scale, ironing out the rough edges of the past is nothing new. A reference to ‘Negro spirituals’ being sung whilst the prisoners of HM Prison Slade dig a trench in ‘Porridge’ was excised when the haphazard dispersal of soil resulted in Fletcher informing Godber that he had no desire to visually resemble said slave labour. A wisecrack typical of Ronnie Barker’s character was removed without once taking into account the audience’s awareness that the programme was produced in the mid-1970s and therefore contains attitudes common to the era, especially from a character born in the 1930s like Norman Stanley Fletcher. To edit old dialogue so that it chimes with contemporary sensibilities is as ridiculous a move as the box-ticking BBC efforts to re-imagine the Britain of the past as some 21st century Islington dinner party vision of a multicultural nation.

Hollywood has set the pace in this revisionism and, not content with producing unwatchable Critical Race Theory lectures masquerading as entertainment (lectures that the cinema-going public mysteriously don’t queue-up to sit through) it has now re-imagined some of its past Identity Politics-free output that people are still drawn to. Disney’s animated masterpiece ‘Fantasia’ has already suffered from this approach, and over the weekend I caught a TV screening of what was once one of my favourite movies, ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’. Around half-an-hour in, I began to realise that one notable aspect of the iconic Audrey Hepburn classic was strangely absent. Having watched the film on numerous occasions, I knew it more or less scene-by-scene and I was naturally expecting the appearance of Mickey Rooney’s toe-curling ‘Jap’ neighbour complaining about the noise from Holly Golightly’s apartment – yet he never appeared.

After a while, it dawned on me an entire character played by a box-office star in his own right had strangely vanished from the story. Now, before I go any further, I have to admit ‘Mr Yunioshi’ has always made me wince and I regarded this particular character as the sole weak link in an otherwise perfect film; a competent actor and household name for decades prior to ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, Mickey Rooney was nevertheless responsible for a portrayal of an oriental idiot in the movie that would put Benny Hill to shame, played purely for laughs complete with comedy goofy teeth – even though it’s not remotely amusing. It’s an unfunny, cringe-inducing performance and would be even if ‘yellow-face’ accusations hadn’t permeated the narrative. I confess I often used to skim through his scenes whenever watching it on a VHS tape back in the day, but did I want Hollywood’s PC police intervening and removing him on my outraged behalf? In a word, no; but it’s happened; the version of the film I saw this time round had no Mr Yunioshi in it. Admittedly, it was a superior watch without him, but that’s not the point.

As with those cheering the toppling of statues of unloved figures from the sidelines, once a trend has been set in motion and has been legitimatised as a means of removing a character from the picture, what happens when those with an unquenchable appetite for destruction then turn their attention to someone the cheerleader for anarchy holds dear – as they will do? Granted, few who love the film will mourn the absence of Mickey Rooney from ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’, yet this is a dangerous precedent. Are all derogatory references to the colour of the black sheriff in ‘Blazing Saddles’ to be edited out, robbing the movie of a key element of its storyline in the process? Give it time. The list is relatively endless of old movies primed for this treatment, and having seen it done once I don’t doubt I’ll see it done again. A cultural line has been crossed, and nothing is sacred when you give a green light that lets loose the non-creative on the creative, however unfashionable their creative endeavours may now be.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED

As an industry, publishing today seems to have followed a similar path to the music business; in its dying, pre-streaming days, with all-year round million-sellers but a distant memory, the Christmas season was the one guaranteed moment when the race to the No.1 spot revived the spirit of singles past. For a few years, the talent show franchise of Simon Cowell monopolised this brief spell in December and reaped the rewards; but in the process, it killed the golden goose as all energies were devoted to the last few weeks of the year at the expense of the rest. When the record-buying public gradually grew bored, the profits dried up. Similarly, the publishing industry right now makes its only real money from the slew of celebrity memoirs and self-help manuals that clog-up the Yuletide shelves – the abundance of which will eventually exhaust all interest. But it certainly can’t survive by depending on the sales of the largely impenetrable novels that routinely scoop literary prizes of no interest to anyone bar broadsheet reviewers and the author themselves. As with most of the creative arts, there appears to be a sizeable disconnect between those operating within them and those whose hard-earned pennies are required to keep them afloat.

Naturally, the insidious virus of Identity Politics infiltrating publishing has played its part. Any cursory visit to the website of a publisher or literary agency whereby profiles of the leading employees are provided will see for themselves the narrowing of publishing’s vision. Most of these employees appear to be 20 and 30-something, London-based middle-class white women with an expressed bias towards the type of ‘staying-in-your-lane’ real-life stories of struggle, hardship and misery mainly derived from the authentic ‘ethnic’ experience as they perceive it – in a sense, extending the financially-appealing approach of Christmas’s biographical best-sellers into the realms of fiction. They’re fond of being transported into worlds removed from their own, but only if these worlds are reportage from the front-line of the approved shortlist of box-ticking Identity categories and can be verified as genuine voices.

Art at its best has always been good at placing the viewer – or reader – in an alien environment, and authors whose imaginations are able to do so understandably have to apply this to themselves, populating their alien environment with a wide range of characters from many different walks of life, characters living lives that a solitary author can’t possibly have lived every one of; it’s what an imagination – and fiction – is all about, and it’s why the novel has been able to command a readership that cuts across all social, sexual and racial barriers for the best part of 200 years or more. One would like to think this is a given to publishers, yet the latest fashion is to decry the author’s imagination. The recent case of Jeanie Cummins, whose successful novel about Mexican migrants, ‘American Dirt’, was accused of cultural appropriation and racial stereotyping by the usual suspects, resulted in the author’s career and reputation being trashed. Her spineless publisher backed down and no notable fellow writers bar the admirably brave Lionel Shriver spoke out against this pernicious trend.

Cancelling a burgeoning literary career at a time when so few authors are able to make a living from writing is especially nasty, but the heavyweights of the past are an even easier target due to the fact their deceased status means they can’t fight back. Penguin Random House recently abandoned their plans to publish a collection of Norman Mailer’s essays to mark his centenary in 2023 due to the fact one of their delicate little employees was triggered by the title of a 1957 Mailer piece titled ‘The White Negro’. Yes, that’s all it takes. One complaint, coupled with the anticipated prospect of a screaming Twitter lynch-mob at the door, and publishers will instantly cave in. But when the creative arts are predominantly staffed by graduates schooled in this creativity-killing cancer, it’s no real wonder; and the glaring absence of irony accompanying the decision of the University of Northampton to place a trigger warning on – you guessed it – ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ underlines how deep the Woke mindset is embedded on campus. Any curious student will now receive a warning about the novel’s ‘explicit material’, though so accustomed are we today to broadcast mediums presaging anything from the archives with a disclaimer specifying how the vintage programme contains plenty with the potential to upset or offend, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the far wider canvas of the written word has fallen prey to this infantile approach.

Publishing employees, even those in a relatively junior position, have increasingly come to believe their role is to police the output of their employer; and if they don’t get what they want, they’ll thcream and thcream and thcream. They famously managed to get Hachette to abandon plans to publish Woody Allen’s memoirs two years ago, though efforts to exploit the snowflake fatwa against JK Rowling mercifully failed. Declaring the presence of a cross-dressing character in Rowling’s 2020 adult novel, ‘Troubled Blood’ to be evidence of the Harry Potter author’s ‘transphobia’, they received solidarity from a few fellow (minor) authors with the same publisher, who proceeded to issue a ‘it’s her or me’ ultimatum; and it was they who were dropped by the publisher rather than the publisher’s cash cow. Rowling’s status is such that she is practically beyond the simple cancellation which less secure authors are vulnerable to, few of whom can rely on the support of other writers when threatened or such useless organisations as the Society of Authors, who are just as terrified of causing offence as the publishing industry.

Perhaps the worst current example of cancel culture within publishing – and one that highlights the gutless cowardice of the industry – comes with the case of Kate Clanchy, an author who actually provided the ‘real-life’ story so beloved of publishers via her 2019 book, ‘Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me’. Clanchy’s mistake in recounting her own equivalent of a dead poets’ society as she revealed the delights of verse to state-school kids was to describe the racial characteristics of some of the children she taught and recalled with affection. Despite initially receiving good reviews and winning an Orwell Prize, the book was soon subjected to the familiar criticisms that provoked panic on the part of her publisher, Picador. The book was hastily withdrawn and Clanchy ordered to rewrite the offending passages for a reissue that has yet to hit the bookshelves.

As publisher, Picador would certainly have supplied an experienced editor as well as the now-obligatory ‘sensitivity proof-reader’ to ensure there was nothing offensive or triggering to the fragile sensibilities of the modern reader lurking in Clanchy’s manuscript before they hit the publishing button. Yet, despite no doubt revelling in the prize-winning acclaim of the book when it appeared, Picador has now dropped it like the proverbial stone. Clanchy’s reputation is in tatters and her work is apparently poised to be excised from Amazon in classic ‘Ministry of Truth’ style. But the meanest ramification of Kate Clancy’s cancellation is the fact that a planned anthology of poems penned by the children she inspired and wrote about has also been dropped. What a great message that sends out to the kids about the literary world; but maybe they might still eventually progress to a creative writing class and can one day provide the industry with the same dull, Identity-laden safe space bilge that is killing the medium.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

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WHEN YOU’RE YOUNG

You have to cut Neil Young a little slack; after all, he is 76. I know it’s easy to forget – or to not even want to accept – that those who rode the wave of a counter-cultural revolution fuelled by the uniquely strident spirit of youth half-a-century ago are all either approaching their 80s or are already octogenarians. And, like his contemporary Van Morrison, Young has always been prone to curmudgeonly behaviour, even before he reached middle-age, let alone old age. He once played a gig at the height of his creative powers in the mid-70s whereby he and his legendary backing band Crazy Horse opened the performance by playing their new album in its entirety before the expected crowd-pleasers would be exhumed; however, when the last song from the latest LP was done, rather than leading the band in ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ or ‘Southern Man’, Young then decided to play said album in full all over again; half the audience exited whilst those that remained united in a chorus of boos. One suspects Young both found it funny and didn’t give a f***. That’s the kind of artist he was and, to a degree, has remained.

In a way, it’s a miracle Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young ever managed to record as much material together as they did; regardless of the sonic magic their combined voices produced, a band housing that number of combative egos could never maintain harmony beyond their harmonies for long. Even the in-house peacekeeper Graham Nash has recently had his patience exhausted by David Crosby, publicly announcing the friendship between him and his long-term collaborator has finally reached a terminal impasse. And while it’s possible to see many of these bust-ups as common occurrences that old gits who’ve known each other for decades routinely experience, Crosby, Stills and Young have been rubbing each other up the wrong way as far back as bloody Woodstock; however, unlike his three bandmates, Neil Young has always been viewed first and foremost as a solo artist, with his most critically-acclaimed work coming outside of the CSNY unit – and he has revelled in wrong-footing critics throughout. Whenever he’s had a commercially successful album, his next release has tended to be a stubbornly difficult listen that the masses have rejected; he’s only ever occasionally flirted with the mainstream as a consequence, never really being at home in it.

I remember in the mid-80s, when the post-punk dismissal of most pre-punk acts was eroding and certain vintage artists were coming back into critical vogue, Young seemed determined to sabotage his newly-established ‘cool’ credentials by voicing his support for Ronald Reagan. Ever the contrarian, he probably found it amusing that the singer revered for railing against Nixon’s war machine in a blistering protest song like ‘Ohio’ was now voting Republican. The reaction wasn’t unlike when Kate Bush was ‘outed’ as a Tory voter a few years back, though why every artist who isn’t Phil Collins has to lean to the left always seems irrelevant to their art unless they’re Paul Weller.

Covid-19 has given rock stars of Neil Young’s generation another opportunity to air their political preferences, and whilst the likes of Eric Clapton and Van Morrison have been condemned as anti-vax fanatics for their provocative opinions on the vaccine as a pandemic panacea, Young’s response to being in the most vulnerable age category when it comes to the coronavirus has resulted in him taking the opposite route. This past week has seen Neil Young reassert his stubborn streak by demanding his back catalogue be removed from Spotify, having raised his objections to the platform’s Joe Rogan podcast allegedly spreading ‘fake information about vaccines’. I’m not a viewer/listener of Rogan myself, but I know of him and I know that he took his massively successful podcast to Spotify, signing the kind of mind-boggling, multi-million dollar deal that was once the preserve of rock stars (like Neil Young) when they switched record labels.

During the height of the pandemic, it seems Joe Rogan was one of the few online celebrities publicly questioning some of the dubious decisions being made by governments in the name of saving lives, and his opposition to vaccination has become a challenge to those who advocate uncensored free speech yet struggle when someone publicises an opinion they themselves vehemently disagree with. Neil Young issued an ultimatum to Spotify that basically said ‘This town ain’t big enough for the both of us’, and when Spotify made it clear they weren’t prepared to abandon the star they’d invested a huge amount of money in, Young took his ball back and refused to play with Spotify again. Considering the miserly royalties Spotify pays the artists whose music it streams, Young probably won’t suffer too much in financial terms by leaving the site; but it seems ironic that his renowned obstinacy now appears to be firmly in tune with the very establishment he’s always liked to position himself on the outside of.

James Blunt, a far younger singer-songwriter who has regularly exhibited a likeable self-deprecating sense of humour online that is much more enjoyable than his insipid music, responded to the spat between Spotify and Neil Young by tweeting ‘If Spotify doesn’t immediately remove Joe Rogan, I will release new music on to the platform’. Amusing, yes, but the fact that Young issued his ‘it’s him or me’ ultimatum and was cheered by the cancel culture mob for doing so suggests his decision was a misfire, advocating corporate censorship and standing alongside those whose aim in life is to silence everyone who doesn’t share their opinions. Does that really sound like the same artist who was fond of recycling the word ‘freedom’ in the lyrics and titles of his songs? Even if Young has always possessed a mischievous talent for sabotaging his own critical and commercial success, to throw his lot in with a crowd for whom freedom is the privilege of the few and not the entitlement of the many feels like stretching his contrariness too far.

Neil Young has been accompanied in his Spotify exodus by Joni Mitchell, Canadian contemporary and, to me, an even more gifted and significant songwriter to emerge from the same richly creative era. What’s worth noting, however – and this is a crucial point – is that both Young and Mitchell were afflicted by polio as children during an outbreak in the early 1950s; the intervention of vaccination was something that enabled them to recover and understandably left them favourable towards vaccines as a means of suppressing viruses. The fact that both are within a whisker of their 80s – and this is the age demographic most at risk from Covid – has also undoubtedly formulated their judgement on this particular issue. Their generation, to which Eric Clapton and Van Morrison also belong, is one of the most pro-jab, with Clapton and Morrison being in more of a minority than Neil Young and Joni Mitchell; the stance of the latter two is the majority one. And maybe that’s what seems odd to some when it comes to Neil Young, at least to those who always expect him to take the opposite stance to the prevailing consensus.

Yet, looking at his track record, there have been many times in his life when he and the orthodoxy have clicked in harmony; ‘Heart of Gold’ topped the US Hot 100 in 1972, after all – quite an achievement for a ‘cult’ artist. Just don’t expect to hear it on Spotify.

© The Editor

Website: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?fan_landing=true&u=56665294