LET ME ENTERTAIN YOU

One of the most consistently enjoyable YT channels for me over the past three or four years has been The Critical Drinker. This consists of author Will Jordan adopting the persona of a moderately inebriated Scotsman narrating subjective movie reviews and amusingly incisive dissections of the way in which Hollywood works these days; his series, ‘Why Modern Movies Suck’ is amongst the most thorough – and thoroughly entertaining – studies of the contemporary film industry and its cultural corrosion as any you’ll find on any medium today. His videos are often very funny, but nine times out of ten he nails it with intelligent and enlightening logic. Although he never appears on camera on his own channel, the Drinker’s reputation has grown to the point whereby he’s now beginning to routinely turn up on other YT channels to discuss his specialist subject; one such appearance was in a new Triggernometry video, during which Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster quizzed him on the death of the movie star – that larger-than-life personality who could put bums on cinema seats on the strength of his name alone. His demise was attributed to several factors, though an anecdote referencing Richard Burton, who disappeared for a week when making ‘Where Eagles Dare’ simply to go on a bender (without informing anyone else involved in the film where he was) was used as an example of the kind of characters that used to inhabit the movie business and no longer do. But this isn’t something exclusive to acting; one could similarly apply that to the music biz and sport.

All the revered rock stars who continue to provide source material for endless books, biopics, articles and documentaries are either dead or in their 80s; likewise, where be the Ian Botham or the James Hunt or the John McEnro of 2024? It’s hard to imagine the dullard sportsmen or women of today still being talked (and written) about 30 or 40 years from now, just as it is our current authors, artists or actors. This either suggests society no longer produces such figures or that such figures just don’t go into these fields anymore because they’ve become so sterile and corporate they’re no longer open to them. Another factor which came up during the Critical Drinker’s Triggernometry interview in relation to movie stars is the loss of mystique that has come with social media; at one time, we’d have to wait till movie stars were past retirement age to get an insight into what they were like as people via an appearance on ‘Parkinson’. Today, we’re now exposed to every dim thought that enters their unscripted heads via Twitter; it’s almost as though it’s written into their contracts that they have to issue opinions on everything from climate change to LGBTXYZ matters – and it has to be the ‘right’ opinion, of course; in the case of football, that’s no problem if you’re Gary Lineker, less so if you’re Joey Barton.

Perhaps the timing is sadly apt, then, to bid farewell to the kind of character whose undoubted talent would certainly still be craved by any football team today, but whose considerable baggage most likely wouldn’t. I’m talking about Stan Bowles, the former footballer whose glory years came at Queens Park Rangers in the 1970s and who passed away over the weekend. Like several players of his generation, he’d been struggling with Alzheimer’s for the last decade and the debilitating disease finally claimed him at the age of 75. The generation Bowles belonged to contained several footballers routinely referred to as ‘mavericks’ – hugely gifted individuals who nonetheless combined their talents with personality traits that managers found hard to rein-in, meaning the bigger and more successful clubs largely avoided signing them. Naturally, they all followed in the footsteps of George Best, the original footballing rock star; and when Best’s drinking and love of the bright lights curtailed his career at the highest level, there were numerous flair players emboldened by Best’s example who quickly filled the void; Frank Worthington was one, and Stan Bowles was another.

Hailing from Manchester, Bowles was signed by the blue half of the city as a teenage apprentice but made only a handful of appearances before a bust-up with Man City coach Malcolm Allison led to him being dispatched to lowly Bury; Bowles then dropped into the Fourth Division, joining Crewe Alexandra, and his nascent career was already beginning to take on the shape of a journeyman when he moved to Second Division Carlisle Utd in 1971. However, it was his year at Carlisle – where he scored 18 goals in 51 games – that helped him catch the eye of fellow Division 2 club Queens Park Rangers, who were eager to find a replacement for star man Rodney Marsh, recently lost to Manchester City. Bowles wasn’t intimidated at the prospect of filling Marsh’s No.10 shirt and his skills as well as his humorous, devil-may-care approach to the game quickly won the fans over. QPR, like many of the capital’s clubs, languished in the all-conquering shadows of Arsenal, Spurs and Chelsea, and it wasn’t until the club achieved promotion in 1973 that the First Division got to see what Stan Bowles could really do. The arrival of ex-Chelsea boss Dave Sexton in 1974 galvanised QPR into an unprecedented period of success, with Bowles at the centre of it.

Something of a ‘London All-Stars’ team at the time, QPR also included former Arsenal captain Frank McLintock in their ranks as well as ex-Chelsea teammates David Webb and John Hollins. Bowles gelled best with club captain Gerry Francis, forming a close bond on and off the pitch; however, whilst Francis was something of a model professional whose natural leadership qualities made him a first choice for England, Bowles was what one might call a ‘wild card’, and he consequently only played for his country on five occasions. Bowles could – and should – have earned far more international caps, but he was regarded as a bit of liability due to his antics, and stories of Stan Bowles are the stuff of laddish legend. Fond of placing a bet, Bowles would often sneak round the corner to a nearby bookie’s on a match day at QPR’S Loftus Road ground shortly before kick-off, usually wearing his full kit; Gerry Francis recalled visiting Stan at home for dinner and the meal being interrupted by the bailiffs, who proceeded to cart away the furniture, leaving dinner to be completed sitting on the floor; and there was the famous occasion when Bowles appeared alongside a group of dedicated athletes on the BBC’s popular ‘Superstars’ TV series whilst nursing a hangover; he ended up with the programme’s all-time record low score. Never a dull moment with Stan.

Whilst it might have seemed winning was secondary to entertaining for Bowles, QPR nevertheless came within a whisker of being League Champions in 1976, only just pipped at the post on the last day of the season by Liverpool. The club has never come so close to winning the title ever again, and most likely never will. They did qualify for Europe due to their runner-up status, though, and Bowles dazzled in QPR’s UEFA Cup campaign the following season, scoring a record eleven goals as the club reached the Quarter Finals of the competition, only to lose a penalty shoot-out to AEK Athens. QPR never reached the heights of the mid-70s again, and Bowles left the club in 1979, briefly signed by Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest before resuming journeyman status at Leyton Orient and Brentford, where he hung up his boots in 1984 – not exactly retiring with the kind of nest-egg today’s players can look forward to, though his gambling didn’t really help.

Stan Bowles never lost any sleep over the opposition. He wasn’t a thinker when it came to the game; he just let his natural talent get on with it. A shrug of the shoulders if he lost, and then it was off down the boozer, or the bookie’s, or the boudoir. Probably not abundant in the qualities that make an ideal husband, the happiest marriage Stan Bowles ever had was with the fans at Loftus Road, who could forgive him anything for bringing them such joy every Saturday afternoon. A man very much of his era, then – an era that (like the man himself) is out of time and out of step with where we are now; more’s the pity.

© The Editor

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

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

MARRIED TO THE MOB

‘In the Loop’, the 2009 movie version of the peerless political satire, ‘The Thick of It’, contains many a telling scene, but perhaps one of the best – and funniest – is when the Minister for International Development, Simon Foster (played by Tom Hollander) is dispatched by the Prime Minister on a fact-finding mission to Washington as war looms in the Middle East. Things aren’t going well for the hapless Foster when suddenly playing with the big boys, and his situation isn’t helped by constant phone calls from an irate constituent back home; the wall that divides his constituency office from the garden of an elderly lady is in danger of collapsing and the lady’s son (played by Steve Coogan) won’t let it go, persistently gate-crashing Foster’s newfound role as an international diplomat and bringing him back down to earth – or to put it more accurately, Northampton. Foster’s reaction is that of a man who evidently sees himself on a higher plane than one occupied by a lowly constituency MP having to deal with such trivialities, conveniently forgetting that he, like every other puffed-up, self-important honourable member ascending the greasy pole, is only ever a vote away from being booted out of office.

I was reminded of Tom Hollander’s character this week when hearing of Tory MP Mark Logan, one of the backbench cheerleaders for a Gaza ceasefire. ‘We’re not MPs to fix potholes,’ he declared with unintentionally hilarious melodrama in the Commons, ‘We’re not MPs to follow up if our next door neighbour’s hedge is growing into my garden. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to protect lives. And this is the opportunity today.’ Yes, you heard it confirmed. Our elected representatives can’t be motivated into action when their insignificant constituents ask for assistance; they can’t be animated when ordinary people come to them because they’re struggling to deal with the kind of problems public servants are supposed to be there to sort out on our behalf; nah, f**k that – much easier to virtue-signal about a trendy cause safely distanced from broken Blighty by several hundred miles, one that will earn them moral brownie points and, not unrelated, might just prevent an encounter with a knife-wielding wannabe Jihadist at their next surgery. For this is where we are now, a place where politicians kowtow to the mob, pressurised into demanding something from Israel that we have no right to, largely because politicians are in fear of their lives if they fail to do the right thing. Well, this monster – which haunts their constituencies and turns-up with flags and placards outside Parliament to remind MPs what the consequences will be if they fail to submit – is a monster our politicians have created. And now it’s payback time.

Appeasement was a dirty word in political circles for many a decade, forever evoking images of poor old Neville Chamberlain and his piece of paper from Herr Hitler. But, as we all know, you could no more appease the Nazi appetite for conquest than you can appease the unholy alliance of the Identitarian and the Sectarian by bowing to their demands. There simply aren’t enough inches to give, and there are too many miles up for grabs. What was essentially a Parliamentary storm in a protocol teacup this week inadvertently exposed both the cowardice and cluelessness of our politicians in failing to address an issue they’ve become accustomed to addressing by burying their heads in the sand. Even when one of their own is slaughtered in his surgery, they skirt around the issue and search for substitutes: online trolls, micro-aggression, the imaginary threat of the Far-Right – anything to avoid the actual elephant in the room. Poor old browbeaten Lindsay Hoyle, nominated as the sacrificial scapegoat of this farce, has become obsessed with the safety of intimidated MPs, yet is no more prepared to look the cause in the eye than any of those who now line-up to call for him to fall on his sword – rather than have another man’s sword do it for him, which is what Sir Lindsay is scared of.

For the past five years, one of the recurring scaremongering tactics of the Right side of Fleet Street has been to play Nostradamus and predict one outcome of a Labour victory in a General Election being a coalition between them and the SNP, something that would accelerate the end of the Union. How ironic, then, that this week’s tragicomic events in the Commons have seen the SNP enter into a marriage of convenience not with the Labour Party, but with the dreaded Antichrists of the Conservative Party. Both the SNP and many Tories threw a hissy fit when the Speaker of the House, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, decided to amend an SNP motion demanding a Gaza ceasefire, putting Labour’s amendment ahead of the original SNP motion when it was time for MPs to vote. Rumours abounded that Labour MP Hoyle – who, as is traditional, must practice impartiality once installed in the big chair – had been ‘leant on’ by Keir Starmer beforehand. Granted, the thought of the Labour leader playing some sort of Ronnie Kray character visiting Hoyle in his private room at the Commons, flanked by a couple of heavies, is patently ludicrous; but this is the picture being painted by the Tories and SNP. Many are claiming Sir Keir had a quiet word in Sir Lindsay’s ear and persuaded him to put the Labour amendment at the head of the queue, followed by a vote on the SNP motion, and then a Government proposal for an ‘immediate humanitarian pause’.

All of this alleged skulduggery was entered into in order to prevent another Labour rebellion, as happened back in November, when 56 Labour MPs sided with the SNP’s calls for an immediate ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict and ten Labour frontbenchers voluntarily walked the plank when the Labour leadership neglected to support the proposal. This week, the SNP had an Opposition Day debate and decided to bring it up again; as rent-a-mob turned up outside Parliament (no doubt thrilled they had a midweek shindig on top of the weekly weekend disruption of Central London), the news of the day’s planned proceedings were announced and the SNP gathered up their toys, ready to throw them out of their collective pram in the direction of the Speaker. But it was the Leader of the House, the Tories’ very own sabre-rattler Penny Mordaunt, who fired the opening salvo by claiming Sir Lindsay had undermined the confidence of the House in him, and the Conservatives would be taking no further part in proceedings. Tory and SNP MPs walked out of the Chamber together, hand-in-hand, united in outrage – the kind of outrage that the plight of the people in their own respective countries of the UK mysteriously never seems to inspire.

As Sir Lindsay was pressurised into a grovelling apology, protestors outside were projecting anti-Semitic slogans onto Big Ben as the Met Woodentops in attendance were probably looking at porn on their phones or taking the knee or something. This is a week in which a pro-Palestine sticker was placed over the Star of David hanging from the neck of the Amy Winehouse statue in Camden – she was a Jewess, don’t cha know – and the Jewish Tory MP Andrew Percy, returning from a recent visit to Israel, claimed in the Commons that he felt safer in Israel than in England, the nation where fellow Tory MP Mike Freer chooses to stand down because he can no longer cope with the threats and intimidation from Islamic activists or where Judges give protestors wearing Hamas paragliding symbols little more than a gentle slap on the wrist. In relation to the unease many Jews in the UK feel at the moment, Percy said ‘this is going to continue happening because we’re not dealing with it’, and in reference to any Commons vote on Gaza, he added ‘members will not vote with their hearts because they are frightened and they are scared…too many are not at the moment because of the threats we’re receiving.’ The kerfuffle in the Commons over Lindsay Hoyle or Labour rebellions or an unlikely SNP/Government alliance comes across as a mere smokescreen to a more serious issue that the majority of MPs are too terrified to confront. Well, they should have thought of that.

© The Editor

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

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

LOST IN TRANSLATION

In October 1961, John Lennon marked his 21st birthday by spending a few days in Paris with Paul McCartney; pouty Mademoiselles held a powerful hold on the post-war erotic imagination where the English were concerned, and John and Paul were immediately mesmerised by the city whose young female population only had to say a few words to be transformed into Brigitte Bardot. But they weren’t just there to chase native skirt; they also wanted to check out the Parisian music scene. After years of stubborn resistance, the French had finally let rock ‘n’ roll breach their musical Maginot Line in the early 60s, but they didn’t entirely surrender themselves to the genuine article, preferring to rebrand it to suit their own tastes. France’s answer to Elvis was Johnny Hallyday, though it would be more accurate to call him the French Cliff Richard or the equivalent of any of several Elvis imitators familiar to British record-buyers of that era. During their stay in Paris, Lennon and McCartney went to see Hallyday play at the Olympia and weren’t impressed, with a postcard from Lennon sent back to Liverpool referring to ‘crappy French Rock’. Perhaps it’s no coincidence this was the trip that saw John and Paul finally ditch their 50s quiffs and have their hair cut into a style they’d quickly trademark as their own.

Far more successful in terms of record sales than ‘crappy French Rock’ was the yé-yé scene, which – though usually written and conceived by middle-aged men – was sung by teenage girls for teenage girls; simple and basic adolescent pop, lyrically immersed in the same subject matter as that being sung about by the black female voices that dominated the pre-Beatle American airwaves at the time, yé-yé can be appreciated today if one is in possession of a rather robust kitsch sensibility. But it’s no real wonder very few of the records by yé-yé stars like Sylvie Vartan – many of which were French-language covers of US hits – charted outside of French-speaking countries as, compared to the Real McCoy, they came across as pale imitations. Only Gallic chanteuses like Francoise Hardy had any kind of success in the UK, as Hardy embodied a Continental ‘cool’ that appealed to a very British idea of the sexy and sophisticated, vaguely bohemian Frenchwoman. Similarly, whilst Italian cultural exports like pizzas, scooters and suits were enthusiastically embraced by the emerging Mod scene, Italy also lagged way behind the UK and US when it came to pop music. The international language of contemporary pop was English; it rarely sounded right or remotely convincing sung in a European lingo.

The only exposure most British audiences had to any kind of ‘foreign’ pop music was during the annual Eurovision Song Contest, and that quickly became something of a joke, with few of its entries ever taken seriously. And yet, amidst the admittedly awful novelty numbers, there were a small handful of memorable tunes that appeared in the Eurovision line-up during this period, one of which blew the overblown ballads off the stage in 1965. The victor that year was young French yé-yé siren, France Gall; although representing Luxembourg, Gall’s winning song, ‘Poupée de cire, poupée de son’, was penned by Serge Gainsbourg and gallops along with the same kind of equestrian rhythm as Scott Walker’s cover of Belgian chanson singer Jacques Brel’s ‘Jackie’. Gainsbourg wrote several French hits for Gall thereafter, but Gainsbourg being Gainsbourg, he mischievously played upon Gall’s girl-next-door innocence when writing her 1966 smash, ‘Les sucettes’, a track which is supposed to be about a girl who loves lollipops, though a closer study of its lyrical double entendres reveals the girl in question prefers something else melting in her mouth.

Western Europe, like the rest of the world, was not immune to the cultural revolution of the 60s, though the charts of the European nations during this period often come across as a curious parallel universe to the standard 60s narrative. Although the usual suspects had a prevailing influence over the young, the respective music industries of the Common Market countries – particularly France – also continued to promote home-grown talent, with the end result being a string of successful singers whose success was largely limited to their own nations (and their numerous linguistic satellites), singers whose careers coexisted with names the rest of us would instantly recognise. Indeed, there are several artists from this era whose enduring popularity in their country of origin has failed to earn them recognition beyond there. Hands up, how many of you have heard of France’s Michèle Torr, Sweden’s Tommy Körberg, Norway’s Kirsti Sparboe, Austria’s Marianne Mendt, Germany’s Katja Ebstein, or Spain’s Karina? Then there’s another Norwegian, Hanne Krogh, who is one of Norway’s best-selling singers of all-time, yet probably couldn’t get arrested outside of Scandinavia. Ring any bells? Well, all received isolated exposure here via their participation in the Eurovision in the late 60s/early 70s, though all had careers in their native lands which survived the spotlight that shone on them for a mere three minutes as far as the English-speaking world was concerned.

The Eurovision Song Contest at this time could sometimes produce songs – rather than stars – with a tad more international longevity. In 1967, the year our very own Sandie Shaw swept the board, the Luxembourg entry was a beautiful song called ‘L’amour est bleu’, sung by a photogenic young Greek called Vicky Leandros. Although remarkably only managing fourth place, it was swiftly covered as an easy-listening instrumental by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat and became a huge hit in countries immune to the Eurovision, famously earning Mauriat the distinction of being the first French act to top the Billboard Hot 100 in the States; shortly afterwards, it was again an instrumental hit – this time by noted rock axe-man Jeff Beck. Vicky Leandros herself may have lost out with ‘L’amour est bleu’, but she returned to the Eurovision in 1972 and won it with ‘Après toi’; translated into English as ‘Come What May’, one of the Contest’s finest dramatic ballads was only kept off the UK No.1 spot by The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards Band – yes, really. Whilst The Beatles may have re-recorded a couple of their early hits in German and David Bowie did likewise with ‘Heroes’ in 1977, few British or American acts have ever followed suit, whereas the language barrier has forced non-English-speaking singers into routinely dropping their mother tongues in the hope of scoring a hit in the profitable market of the Anglosphere. That the two Eurovision songs performed by Vicky Leandros succeeded outside of the Francophone world as an instrumental and an English language version respectively speaks volumes.

Mind you, the Eurovision itself didn’t make it easy for any participating singers harbouring hopes of international success until a notable rule change in 1973 that freed up the acts to sing in English if they preferred to, something that the following year’s winners – a certain foursome from Sweden – benefitted hugely from as they embarked on an unprecedented career for a Eurovision victor, one it would be hard to imagine them enjoying if singing solely in Swedish. That said, I have to admit some of the Eurovision entries from the decade leading up to Abba’s landmark win in 1974 do possess a quaint, cynical-free charm and an upbeat, optimistic innocence impossible to recapture today, when the majority of the participants sing songs in English that sound like every other homogenised pop record rolling off the British and American production line. Those vintage tracks sung in French, German, Norwegian and all the other notable European languages can take me back to childhood turnings of the radio dial, when distant Continental stations playing such sounds could be detected popping in and out of the aural shortwave shower. They still seem to resonate with the magical aura of far-off lands that don’t feel so far-off anymore.

© The Editor

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

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

HELLO, GOOD BY

So, farewell then to a couple of dishonourable members whose names were straight outta ‘Carry On Up Westminster’ – Peter Bone and Chris Skidmore. Prominent Brexiteer Bone was forced to surrender his seat in the wake of allegations of bullying and sexual misconduct that led to a recall petition, whereas Net Zero cheerleader Skidmore voluntarily walked the plank when his government’s Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill became a personal issue. Bone had held Wellingborough in Northamptonshire since 2005, whilst Skidmore had been MP for Kingswood in South Gloucestershire from 2010 till this year. Neither were graduates from the class of ’19, but their joint exits from Parliament seem to represent further chinks in the blue wall hastily erected during that year’s General Election to replace the red one, adding further weight to the prediction that the blue one will go the way of the red one by the end of this year. Labour overturned a majority of 18,540 in Wellingborough, giving the Party a swing of 28.5%, which was the second biggest handover from Conservative to Labour since WWII, not to mention the Tories’ largest drop in vote share in any post-war by-election. In Kingswood, Labour overturned an 11,000 majority – even though the constituency itself won’t even be fought at the next General Election due to boundary changes. What both results mean is that the Tories have now experienced 10 by-election defeats in this parliament, which is the most since the dying days of Harold Wilson’s original administration in the late 60s.

Kingswood has only existed as a parliamentary constituency since the February 1974 General Election, and in its half-century of existence has swapped hands between Labour and Tory several times. Wellingborough has followed a similar path, though its vintage is slightly older, electing its first MP (Labour’s Walter Smith) in 1918; both, however, would no doubt have been earmarked as safe Tory seats had not the tide turned so dramatically against the governing party over the past two or three years. In the case of Peter Bone, the allegations against him were of such a distasteful nature that it hardly helped when he pushed forward his ‘common-law wife’ (and Northamptonshire councillor) Helen Harrison as his potential replacement, implying Bone would be a backseat driver. The electorate in Northamptonshire didn’t buy it, and the prospect of a Bone dynasty was scuppered by the election of Labour’s Genevieve ‘Gen’ Kitchen on Thursday night. Northampton native Kitchen had finished runner-up to Andrea Leadsom in South Northamptonshire in 2019, but Bone’s premature retirement had cleared a path for her to have a crack at Wellingborough, and she captured it with 45.9% of the vote.

The Tory vote in both constituencies was also hampered by the presence of Reform UK – AKA the rebranded Brexit Party of old; Reform finished third in Wellingborough and in Kingswood as well, splitting the Right in the same way UKIP had back in the 2010s. David Cameron once famously referred to Nigel’s barmy army as ‘fruitcakes’ until he realised he had to appease the threat they posed and instigated the EU Referendum. This time round, the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg have attempted to hold out an olive branch to Reform in order to incorporate them into the Conservative Party; but too many Tory voters feel let down by the Conservatives on the key issues of Brexit and immigration, and having Reform UK on hand means they don’t have to vote Labour or Lib Dem. Nigel Farage told ‘The World at One’ he reckoned Labour would win the next General Election ‘with or without Reform’, so the likelihood of any desperate, straw-clutching merger between Reform and the Tories seems pretty remote; besides, the divide on the Right is too great now for such a union to be contemplated, and Reform UK’s performance in the two by-elections was the best since their former incarnation.

Nigel Farage claims most Tories would prefer him as leader of the Conservative Party than Rishi Sunak, though it would appear Farage is a more effective weapon for Labour, capitalising on what looks like an irreparable rift in Tory ranks that can only benefit the opposition. This sentiment was echoed by an anonymous member of the PM’s backbench critics, quoted as saying that Labour was ‘storming to a huge victory and we have an insurgent party on the Right polling above 10% – cue Nigel Farage’s intervention two months out from a General Election and we’re facing an extinction level event.’ So panicky are some Tories about what awaits them at the end of the year that the notion of switching leaders yet again is gathering pace on the backbenches. Of course, backbench ‘rebellions’ and internal plotting against a Tory leader are nothing new; we’ve seen it happen to virtually every Conservative Prime Minister from Ted Heath onwards, even to the imperious Mrs T when the Tories appeared to be staring electoral defeat in the face. John Major famously had his problems with plotters he referred to as ‘those bastards’, but the musical chairs at the top of the Party over the past five years have exceeded anything seen previously; rather like trying to refresh a dead franchise such as ‘Doctor Who’ by triggering one more regeneration, replacing a lame duck Tory PM with another is something the public are both tired of and unconvinced by. It just won’t work anymore.

A Lib Dem surge in Wellingborough or Kingswood never happened, with the Party losing their deposits in both seats; and whilst the Tories were bridesmaids in the two constituencies, the scale of the loss was so great that a silver medal can only be perceived as a booby prize. The Prime Minister did his best to put on a brave face, saying the Tories ‘had work to do to show people that we are delivering on their priorities and that’s what I’m absolutely determined to do, but it also shows that there isn’t a huge amount of enthusiasm for the alternative in Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, and that’s because they don’t have a plan. When the General Election comes, that’s the message I’ll be making to the country. Stick with our plan, because it is starting to deliver the change that the country wants and needs.’ What – slipping into recession? It was noticeable that even Keir Starmer wasn’t getting carried away, though he no doubt breathed a sigh of relief when Thursday’s results came in, especially after the kind of week Labour have had, what with criticism from the Green lobby for axing a flagship pledge to squander an annual £29bn on such issues, not to mention another anti-Semitism row blotting the Party’s copybook in Rochdale. Going for the blokey vote, Starmer said his ‘team’ had to ‘fight like we’re five points behind…as every football fan knows, you don’t win the league by a good result in February.’ On me ‘ead, son.

Labour can certainly count on the first-time student vote in university cities, as well as the metropolitan middle-class Guardianistas, but the old hardcore Labour block that loaned its vote to the Tories in 2019 remains largely unimpressed; therefore, wooing the floating voter and the disgruntled diehard Tory is imperative, as is the undeniable need for Labour to gain ground in Scotland as well as keeping sweet the Muslim vote in Northern towns and numerous London boroughs. Given recent events, the latter may well be the Party’s stiffest challenge once the hustings are underway, which also suggests the much-discussed Tory apocalypse will be as dependent on the self-implosion of the Conservative Party as it will on Labour successes. Well, the Tories are certainly doing a pretty decent job of that at the moment, for I doubt Rishi Sunak will be able to quell the rumblings and rebellions over the next few months with the limited tools at his disposal. Indeed, he’s probably gazing wistfully in the direction of Moscow, realising there’s actually more than one way to silence one’s opponents.

© The Editor

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

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

ROCHDALE COWBOYS

One understandably overlooked casualty of the grotesque massacre of 7 October 2023 – in terms of its impact on the world beyond the Middle East – has been Keir Starmer’s fragile success in expunging anti-Semitism from the Labour Party. It’s fair to say after numerous investigations into this issue in the wake of the Corbyn era, as well as the withdrawal of the whip from Diane Abbott following her sublimely stupid letter on her favourite subject to the Observer last year, the Labour leader probably thought – or at least hoped – he could keep a lid on the problem. With this being an Election year, the last thing Starmer needed was an event guaranteed to bring all the simmering anti-Semitic sentiments back to the boil, ones that are never far from the surface where the Left-wing of the Labour Party is concerned. Israel’s justifiable retaliation against the biggest slaughter ever carried out on its home soil predictably prompted a series of dim statements from various Labour MPs. For example, Kate Osamor, Labour member for Edmonton, declared that Israel’s incursion into Gaza should be regarded as genocide, and chose Holocaust Memorial Day to air this informed opinion; she was suspended for her troubles, but Labour has routinely been accused of dragging its heels in taking decisive action whenever any such ill-advised utterance has emerged from the lips of yet another Hamas apologist on the backbenches.

Whilst illiberal Lefty metropolitan types gorge on war porn by persistently intruding upon the private suffering of Gaza civilians used as shields by Hamas and spewing it across social media, the Muslim vote that Labour depends on in deindustrialised provincial towns and cities north of Watford Gap remains a tricky balancing act for the Party. Having effectively abandoned the white working-class via its alienating immersion in Identity Politics, Labour is prepared to turn a blind eye to some of the less enlightened prejudices of its target electorate in order to secure its vote. Labour badly needs to keep its Muslim core sweet in towns like Rochdale, which is 30% Asian, especially if it wants to win the next General Election. But sometimes the candidates it selects to appeal to this audience evidently forget they’re not supposed to be simply preaching to the converted; if elected, they’re representing the whole Party in their constituency, and a Labour Party led by Keir Starmer that is intent on being elected into Government doesn’t require their man in Rochdale upholding every negative stereotype associated with those within a particular community not necessarily renowned for its lack of sectarian bigotry. Shame they selected Azhar Ali, then.

Having being chosen as the Labour candidate to fight the Rochdale by-election brought about by the death of sitting Labour MP Tony Lloyd last month, Azhar Ali had addressed a meeting of the Lancashire Labour Party and proceeded to spout conspiracy theory bollocks he’d no doubt picked-up online. By implying Israel had allowed the October 7 massacre to take place in order that it now had an excuse to invade Gaza, Mr Ali exposed himself as a bit of a twit. However, in the light of his comments emerging, the displeasure of the Party forced him into a swift public apology; this initially appeared to be satisfactory to the leadership and Labour announced it was still backing Ali. Starmer darlings like Lisa Nandy and Anneliese Dodds were out and about in Rochdale campaigning for their candidate at the weekend and Shadow Minister without Portfolio Nick Thomas-Symonds defended the decision to stick with him on ‘Today’. And then Labour abruptly withdrew its support, announcing that Ali had been suspended from the Party pending an investigation due to other (unspecified) comments re Israel coming to light.

The U-turn on Azhar Ali has naturally been seized upon by Labour’s main opponents, with the Prime Minister accusing Labour of bowing to ‘enormous media pressure’, whilst a spokesperson for Campaign Against Anti-Semitism responded to the sudden decision by saying, ‘Labour’s withdrawal of support for its candidate at this late stage just looks as expedient as the failed attempt to defend him. Sir Keir Starmer has blotted an otherwise fairly admirable copybook and given the public reason to doubt the earnestness of his promise to tear out anti-Semitism by its roots in Labour.’ Starmer himself has attempted to justify the U-turn by claiming ‘Certain information came to light over the weekend in relation to the candidate. There was a fulsome apology. Further information came to light yesterday calling for decisive action, so I took decisive action. It is a huge thing to withdraw support for a Labour candidate during the course of a by-election. It’s a tough decision, a necessary decision, but when I say the Labour Party has changed under my leadership, I mean it.’ Labour’s dithering and lack of closer examination of its candidate in Rochdale means it is now in a difficult position. It’s too late to remove Azhar Ali from the list of candidates for the by-election on 29 February, as nominations have already closed; this means although Ali will still be listed as Labour on the ballot, if he wins he will enter Parliament as an independent and therefore Labour will not retain the seat.

Needless to say, the Labour candidate in Rochdale being belatedly abandoned by Labour has given the other candidates standing for the seat quite a boost; they include a former Labour man renowned for his mild-mannered temperament, George Galloway, described by the Director of Public Affairs for the Board of Deputies of British Jews as ‘perhaps the most hideous individual in politics’. Yet another ex-Labour name from the dim and distant political past, Simon Danczuk, is also standing, though this time for the Reform Party. You might recall him from the early years of the Winegum, back when he was a rabid supporter of Tom Watson’s ‘Westminster VIP Paedo Ring’ fable and had a young comedy wife with cleavage she was fond of exhibiting on Twitter. Danczuk was actually the MP for the constituency at one time, though was dropped by the Party when it emerged he’d been ‘sexting’ a 17-year-old. Interestingly, the Green candidate, Guy Otten, has experienced a reversal of Azhar Ali’s position; having being condemned within the right-on Green ranks for criticising Islam and Palestinians, Mr Otten has decided to jump before being pushed and his is another name on the ballot that won’t be representing the listed party should he be victorious.

With Labour’s withdrawal of support for Azhar Ali claiming the headlines, it then emerged that another member of the Party had been suspended following further comments on the subject of Israel. Graham Jones, the former MP for the ex-Red Wall seat of Hyndburn in Lancashire, had been selected by the Party to fight the seat at the forthcoming General Election. Although Labour has kept tight-lipped about what Mr Jones actually said, the Guido Fawkes website posted an audio recording in which Jones was said to have used ‘an expletive’ to describe Israel and apparently claimed British Jews who choose to fight in the Israeli Army ‘should be locked up’. In a concentration camp, by any chance? Jones is also alleged to have blamed the suspension of fellow Labour MP Andy McDonald for anti-Semitic remarks on ‘people in the media from certain Jewish quarters’.

The swiftness of Jones’s suspension is probably a reaction to criticism of how long it took the leadership to drop Azhar Ali, but if Keir Starmer is to abide by his promise of tearing out anti-Semitism in the Labour Party by its roots, then this kind of persistent behaviour from the Left of the Party has to be dealt with far quicker than he dealt with Azhar Ali. The fact Labour is prepared to throw away a Parliamentary seat it was odds-on to retain should demonstrate how committed the leadership is to ridding Labour of this particular cancer. But depending too heavily on the votes of a community containing some who fervently believe Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth could prove a costly error come the autumn.

© The Editor

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

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

SHAMANIC STREET PREACHER

When Harry Enfield was at his critical and commercial peak in the early 90s, his shows followed the Dick Emery tradition in that they consisted of a series of sketches featuring a group of comic characters played by the star of the show, ones that tended to revert to a default setting whatever situation they found themselves in; catchphrases were crucial to this tactic, so the viewer watched each sketch in eager anticipation of the moment when the specific character inevitably blurted theirs out – and the characters never failed to deliver; the repetition was all part of the fun. One of Enfield’s finest creations during this period was a young German visiting (mainly) London tourist spots; as he patiently listened to the tour guide spiel, the subject of WWII bombing always reared its ugly head, something which prompted the German to pipe-up and announce, ‘I feel I must apologise for the conduct of my country during the last War’; even when assured his apology was unnecessary – by this time, half-a-century had passed, after all – the German was adamant the guilt he carried via the crimes of his forefathers must be declared to the British public. All for comic effect, naturally; but for perhaps the first few decades following the end of the Second World War, there was certainly an existential crisis shared by the generations raised in the long shadow cast by the conflict and by Germany’s leading role in provoking it – one they were determined to resolve.

The physical division of the country between East and West, which lasted the best part of 45 years, appeared to represent a triumph of capitalism over communism long before the Berlin Wall was torn down. West Germany experienced an economic boom whilst the GDR had the same grim, dismal and depressing ambience of all the rundown Eastern Bloc Soviet satellite states. Yet it took more than economics for the post-war generation of Germans to shake off the shame of the nation’s Nazi past; in order to actually feel a degree of pride in their country again, Germans found new ways of selling the brand internationally. True, Hitler impersonations and comic German characters rooted in wartime stereotypes were still part and parcel of British comedy shows throughout this period of difficult reconstruction, but two cultural exports played their part in altering perceptions of Germans – football and music.

The former was aided by the performance of the West German national team as the World Cup became a global television fixture thanks to advancements in satellite technology; under the leadership of Franz Beckenbauer, West Germany were runners-up in 1966, semi-finalists in 1970, and winners in 1974. Their club sides, especially Bayern Munich, dominated European competition in the first half of the 70s, and as the likes of Beckenbauer, Muller, and Netzer helped give Germany a fresh identity, particularly for those too young to remember the War, the incursion of Germans into the UK’s experimental ‘progressive’ music scene during the same period had an even more significant impact. Although lumbered with a name still bearing the hallmarks of antiquated prejudices, what was labelled ‘Krautrock’ in the early 70s is today so fixed a term to describe a radically innovative style of German music from that era that it seems to have evaded any negative connotations and has largely sidestepped the contemporary fashion for redesigning old words in order to avoid giving new offence. It certainly doesn’t have the same awkward ring to it as that which was used to describe Ragtime and Jazz vocal styles in the early 20th century, i.e. ‘Coon Singing’.

Unlike the French – who spent a good deal of the 60s resisting the musical Anglosphere – the Germans embraced and absorbed it. The Beatles’ Hamburg sojourns made them aware early on that there was a receptive audience in the Fatherland, and the Beat Club/Musik Laden TV series later provided a vital showcase for UK and US acts; its excellent survival rate compared to TOTP has also proven to be an archive goldmine. Come the revolutionary fervour that swept across Western Europe in 1968, the historical legacy of Nazism – which rebellious youth fired by the fresh foreign sounds pumping into campuses held their parents’ generation responsible for – led to some challenging the established order by heading down the radicalised route that eventually culminated in the likes of the Baader-Meinhof Group; however, the more ingenious opted for instruments over explosives. What was interesting about the nascent Krautrock bands was how they successfully outgrew the British and American influences and quickly developed a style that was distinctive and unique from music originating in the Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll. With a more avant-garde slant that incorporated Psychedelia, Freeform Jazz, and electronica of the Musique Concrète variety, Krautrock was a broad canvas that pushed the experimental boat way beyond the already-adventurous landscapes of British Prog Rock.

Lengthy – albeit never boring – instrumentals that became a hallmark of Krautrock helped overcome the language barrier that had always hampered German pop acts breaking beyond German-speaking nations; often, a Krautrock LP can sound like the soundtrack album for a mad, crazy movie that only exists in the head; indeed, the longer and more hypnotic the instrumental, the more it spanned the duration of a hefty spliff in the early 70s, so the genre was very much in tune with British audiences of a certain age and social demographic at the time. The term covered a wide variety of intriguing and original acts like Neu!, Faust, Tangerine Dream and even the early Kraftwerk, though perhaps the most dazzlingly inventive and durable band of them all were Can. Formed in Cologne in the key year of 1968, Can had been inspired into existence by the New York Rock scene represented by The Velvet Underground and by the avant-garde minimalist composers; as two members of the band had studied under Stockhausen, they were well-versed in the esoteric, but were excited at the idea of blending contemporary trends both left-field and mainstream, with a heavy emphasis on the rhythm section influenced by US Funk. However, being fronted by the unstable American vocalist Malcolm Mooney on the band’s first album had a built-in obsolescence and by 1970, Can were on the lookout for a new frontman.

It’s hard to think of a more romantic episode in Rock history than how Can found Mooney’s replacement; they stumbled upon him busking on a street corner in Munich. Kenji ‘Damo’ Suzuki was a Japanese hippie bumming around Europe, and his unmistakable charisma along with his unique singing style – which mixed English, German, Japanese and gibberish of his own surreal making – persuaded Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit to invite him to join the band on the spot. His first proper album with Can was the groundbreaking and mind-blowing ‘Tago Mago’ in 1971, an album that still sounds like nothing before or after, and one that has had perhaps a greater influence on music one could regard as ‘alternative’ over the past 50 years than any other record. The second album in the landmark trio Suzuki recorded with Can, 1972’s ‘Ege Bamyasi’, prompted Melody Maker to declare, ‘Can are without doubt the most talented and most consistent experimental rock band in Europe, England included’. After 1973’s ‘Future Days’, the classic Can line-up fractured as Suzuki left the band, became a Jehovah’s Witness, and didn’t make any music for a decade.

Damo Suzuki was first diagnosed with colon cancer – the disease that had claimed his father – aged just 33, and the cancer returned 30 years later. Second time around, he was given a 10% chance of survival, yet managed to keep going for another ten years until it finally got him for good aged 74 just a couple of days ago. He may never have been a household name, but as the most charismatic and compelling frontman of an extraordinary form of music, Damo Suzuki was a cult figure that anyone with anything about them can’t help but love.

© The Editor

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

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

MIRROR, MIRROR

With any great leap forward in technology, the layman usually experiences a moment when it dawns on them that something has changed; for me, that moment came in the late 90s, when an ad appeared on TV that managed to morph together archive footage of the great Manchester Utd team of the 60s – the one featuring the immortal Charlton, Best & Law triumvirate – with contemporary Old Trafford heroes like Ryan Giggs, so it genuinely looked as though they were playing alongside each other. With any such attempt previously, the join between then and now would have been as glaring as the one separating Frankie Howerd’s toupee from his real hair, yet this was the wake-up call that it was suddenly possible to blend old and new in a seamless fashion, creating an entirely fresh reality. An episode of ‘Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’ from roundabout the same time utilised similar digital advances to cleverly superimpose some of the characters from that series into one of the memorable episodes from the original ‘Star Trek’ called ‘The Trouble with Tribbles’. Since then, further leaps and bounds have seen the kind of ‘face swap’ gimmick available for photos via various mobile apps expanded to accommodate the moving image. The past three or four years have seen everything from vintage photographs of illustrious historical figures ‘brought to life’ by manipulating their features into movement to inserting the faces of minor celebrities into iconic pop videos or clips from classic movies that they obviously never appeared in.

Most of these examples of pretty jaw-dropping innovation have been used for humorous purposes and, to be fair, some of them are quite funny, if a tad creepy; the fact that such shorts have been fan-made demonstrates how the technology has already filtered down to the amateur, even if Hollywood has also tried to make use of this technology. Now-deceased actors like Carrie Fisher and Peter Cushing have been carefully incorporated into recent ‘Star Wars’ movies, and the octogenarian Harrison Ford was ‘de-aged’ for certain scenes in the last Indiana Jones release. It does feel like cheating, though when has Hollywood not tried to defy the ageing process or death itself? Many motion pictures produced in the 50s took hours to light before filming began in order that some of the older actresses keen to prolong their appeal could look far younger on the silver screen than they did off it, and a woeful entry in the ‘Pink Panther’ series released after the 1980 death of Peter Sellers attempted to excuse his absence by stuffing it with unused scenes from previous Clouseau outings and hoped nobody would notice. Today’s technology, however, can be accessed almost as quickly by the people as it can by the movie industry. AI has already become an established fan tool in music for recreating the voices of the dead and enabling them to sing songs they never sang; but in visual terms, the effects are gradually being employed for more sinister means.

So-called ‘revenge porn’, in which a jilted other half uploads intimate photos or even videos of their ex online has garnered numerous headlines over the past few years, coming across as a malicious addition to post-split stalking; and however horrible such private moments being exposed to an audience they were never intended for might be for the (usually) woman targeted, at least they were genuine episodes of intimacy they’d actually participated in. The odious emergence of what is referred to as ‘Deepfake’ videos is another thing altogether. As the technology has evolved, various Deepfake videos have appeared online of public and political figures such as Donald Trump – even if with him it’s often hard to tell if one is watching a synthetic fabrication or the man himself; but perhaps the most unnerving Deepfake development has been in the murky world of internet pornography, whereby the faces of famous women have been digitally transplanted onto the bodies of porn actresses – or wannabe porn actresses – participating in graphic sexual acts. This in itself is disturbing enough, though the practice has subsequently stretched to ordinary women whose social media photo albums have been plundered and their likenesses stolen, inserted into porn videos they had absolutely nothing to do with.

To anyone under, say, 40 the idea that a virtual gallery of one’s life would only be available in a physical album accessed solely by those who appear in the photos must seem incomprehensible. In this century so far, more than one generation has grown up with the concept of a social media account that is crammed with all the images that would once have been restricted to family and actual friends being an utterly normal state of affairs. There was bound to be a downside to this abundance of images and its causal use by youth, whose every waking moment sometimes feels as though it has to be visually documented and shared with the world. Apparently, it only takes 150 facial images of an individual to successfully animate and recreate for the most convincing of face transplants, and with the sheer amount of available images of an individual housed at their Facebook residence, it’s not as if the creator of Deepfake porn is short of material to work with. It was only a matter of time before this especially unpleasant strain of AI encompassed the non-celebrity as a means of exacting a wholly new and brutal form of revenge.

This week I watched a ‘Storyville’ documentary on BBC4 in which a 20-something American student gave a first-hand account of her personal experience of being targeted in a Deepfake hit. After noticing she’d begun receiving a deluge of friend requests, many of which were highly suggestive, she was then contacted by a genuine friend who sent her a link to a porn site, apologising but advising her to click on it. She did as she was advised, and this is when she was greeted by a video of herself doing what women do in online pornography; her name was emblazoned on the video, which was merely one of several featuring her ‘avatar’, and a false profile accompanied the videos that had evidently provoked regular viewers into seeking her out elsewhere online. This upsetting discovery understandably left her shocked, frightened, and paranoid; after eventually contacting the police, she soon learnt there was little in law that could be done to help. In the US, what is known as Section 230 not only enables websites to be set up, but also serves as a shield for these sites when they attract negative press from making a substantial profit hosting distasteful videos, absolving them of responsibility and allowing them to avoid the kind of litigation older mediums are subject to.

Feeling abandoned by the justice system, the girl soon realised a former college friend was also being targeted in the same way; as the two got in touch again, they navigated some pretty gruesome sites together, including one in which subscribers submit images of women to be redesigned so their faces are drenched in cum or for them to be reimagined naked. It gradually emerged that several other girls they knew from college were also receiving the same treatment and they began to narrow down a list of potential suspects, finally settling on the only male student who was known to all the girls targeted. He’d been a close friend, but had become emotionally draining to the point whereby the girls had no option but to place a distance between him and them. When his name was passed on to the police, they couldn’t do anything other than ring him and tell him not to be a naughty boy; and that was that. He remains unpunished and it’s the word of the girls against his.

According to stats on the ‘Storyville’ programme, Deepfake sites are doubling every six months, and researchers predict there will be more than 5.2 million of them by the end of this year; 90% of them feature non-consensual pornography of women. As the programme showed how easy it is to acquire the soft-wear to put such videos together, it’s hard not to come away feeling we’ve only just begun. The possibilities are endless and endlessly worrying.

© The Editor

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

Patreon: https://www.johnnymonroe.co.uk/videos

THEY’D RATHER GO BLIND

Don’t mention the war – sorry, don’t mention Islam; and whatever you do, don’t mention immigration. Mention online trolls, mention micro-aggression, and mention Incels – that’s a nice, neat way of sweeping everything under the carpet and absolving yourself of any responsibility whatsoever, as long as you happen to be a Member of the Cabinet or perhaps a prospective Member of the Cabinet belonging to the Labour Party. The amount of heads from the political class that are currently buried in the sand is remarkable where ongoing incidents are concerned that involve faux asylum-seekers that our f**ked-up system has welcomed into the country without any regard for public safety. The past week has seen an acid attack in Clapham that left a young mother and her two children in hospital with life-changing injuries, carried out by a former Afghan national granted asylum status in the UK despite having fallen off the back of a lorry at Dover and having being convicted of exposure and sexual assault in 2018. Mind you, as with the failed bomber of Liverpool Cathedral on Remembrance Sunday in 2021, Abdul Ezedi apparently ‘converted to Christianity’ as part of the Church of England’s mind-bogglingly misguided mission to Anglicise the Islamic heathens, so that probably helped his application.

Unrelated, but no less relevant to the subject under discussion, has been the simultaneous announcement of the Tory MP for Finchley and Golders Green, Mike Freer, that he intends to stand down at the next Election following a relentless campaign of abuse, intimidation and death threats from Islamic extremists over the past decade. Despite representing one of the oldest and most established Jewish constituencies in the country, Freer failing to fall in line with the anti-Israel/pro-Palestine cause has seen him exposed to unremitting pressure that would prompt even the most resilient of public servants to throw the towel in; after all, he narrowly avoided a potentially-fatal encounter with wannabe Jihadist Ali Harbi Ali in 2021, with the knife-wielding lunatic instead turning his attentions to the Tory MP for Southend West, Sir David Amess, who he murdered in cold blood. The response from the political class to this brutal slaying at the MP’s surgery was, to be blunt, pathetic; unlike the murder of Jo Cox five years before – when the handy far-right leanings of her assassin were headline news – the Islamist angle in Amess’s case was played down for fear of ‘offending’ the Muslim Community, that catch-all phrase that groups together all the various branches of a global faith under one homogenous umbrella; instead, MPs in Parliament reacted to the slaughter of one of their own by focusing on social media trolls and encouraging politicians to be ‘nicer’ to one another.

The Education Secretary Gillian Keegan was grilled on Sky News at the weekend about why the man wanted for the Clapham acid attack was granted asylum; her reply was a classic evasion of the real issue by a politician, claiming ‘This is not really about asylum’, echoing the comments of another Tory MP, Caroline Nokes, on ‘Newsnight’ in the wake of the incident last week, who instead played the hackneyed ‘feminist’ card by blaming the violent assault on a mother of two and her children on sexist micro-aggression; she was accompanied in her fantasy narrative by Bell Ribeiro-Addy, the Labour MP for Streatham, the constituency in which the attack took place, who attributed the crime to Incel culture – indeed, what better way to avoid the elephant in the room by blaming it all on a minority misogynist cult, many of whose members happen to be that most convenient of bogeymen, the straight white male? Both MPs were fortunate this farcical discussion took place on the BBC, where they were given a predictably easy ride by the dependably clueless Kirsty Wark; and the producers of ‘Newsnight’ wonder why nobody watches it anymore.

If the likes of Caroline Nokes are the future of the Conservative Party, they deserve to be out of power for the next half-decade; the Party should really have taken the radical plunge and gone for a figure like Kemi Badenock a couple of years back instead of saddling us with Truss and Sunak; she’s the only hope they’ve got because she speaks a language the majority of this people in this country understand, unlike the likes of Nokes and a handful of other here today/gone tomorrow Tories who have embraced the blind eyes and sandy heads of the Woke crowd in a desperate attempt to stave off inevitable defeat at the hands of the most committed ‘progressives’ of the lot, Labour. Lest we forget, the Labour response to this latest outrage committed by an individual who should never have been allowed to make the UK his home has not only included Bell Ribeiro-Addy blaming Incel culture, but also the reliably stupid Sadiq Khan commenting on the need to educate the capital’s youth on the dangers of corrosive substances, despite the fact that Abdul Ezedi is in his early 30s and, one assumes, old enough to distinguish between right and wrong.

Neither chose to mention the inconvenient truth that the asylum system both major Parties are responsible for, one that granted a convicted sex-offender the right to stay here, had a little bit more to do with the incident than bloody Incels or ‘young people’. Most of us can see what the actual problem is with this issue, yet the blatant blind spot exhibited by so many of our leading politicians merely emphasises once again just how disconnected they are from the electorate. Considering that most mainstream politicians desperate to be handed the keys to power – or desperate to hold onto them – are so eager to jump aboard any chattering class bandwagon passing by that they will defy biological logic to ensure a free ride, it’s no real wonder they downplay the threat of Islamist extremism or unchecked immigration to appease the moral minority in control of the MSM platforms transmitting the consensus to the masses; and when those lifting their heads above the parapet and daring to air the opinion of the majority are rewarded with the sack or fail to deliver on promises made for fear of losing their Parliamentary privileges, the electorate simply has its beliefs confirmed that the powers-that-be aren’t listening to anything beyond their click-bait echo chambers. All of which yet again points to a dearth of choice come the autumnal ballot box.

I READ YAHOO NEWS TODAY – OH, BOY!

I recently commented to a friend on the habit of Yahoo News headlines marking the passing of a renowned thespian by highlighting a minor entry on their CV that is blown out of all proportion, presumably because it imagines the perceived thickness of its readers can only relate to anyone associated with a noted success. I joked that if Orson Welles were still alive and suddenly dropped dead, the Yahoo News headline would be something along the lines of ‘Birds Eye Frozen Peas Voice-Over Man Dies’. The news that respected character actor – and (it has to be said) gifted voice-over artiste on numerous ads – Michael Jayston has died saw Yahoo News break the sad announcement by declaring ‘Only Fools and Horses Actor Dies’. He apparently appeared in one episode of the long-running sitcom in 1996, but for those of us who recall his key role as Alec Guinness’s right-hand man in ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ or as the Tsar in ‘Nicholas and Alexandra’, we don’t necessarily associate him with Del Boy and Rodney. At least Ian Lavender, whose death was announced on the same day, could be rightly named as ‘Dad’s Army Actor’ in his Yahoo News obituary. As the last member of an illustrious cast to go, Lavender will be forever immortalised as ‘stupid boy’ Pike, a part he was locked into for the best part of a decade, long after he ceased to be a boy, much as Clive Dunn played a prematurely old man long before he actually became one. Oh, well – maybe one day Yahoo News will get its act sorted with ‘Buggernation Street Man Dies’. Not for a bit, though…one hopes…

© The Editor

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

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

THE PALACE OF INJUSTICE

15 May 1800, an evening at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; in attendance was the King, George III. As was customary even then, the sovereign joined his subjects in standing for the playing of the National Anthem; during this musical interval, a pistol was aimed at the royal box and a shot fired at the King. The shot missed and the would-be assassin was swiftly apprehended. Had this regicide succeeded, it’s indisputable that the culprit would have been escorted to the gallows; however, James Hadfield was fortunate when it came to standing trial for high treason. Not only had his attempt on the King’s life failed, but he acquired the services of the country’s leading barrister, Thomas Erskine; moreover, his plea of insanity appeared to be grounded in fact. Hadfield had suffered severe head injuries at the 1794 Battle of Tourcoing during his spell as a soldier; upon his discharge from the army, he drifted into a religious cult, one that convinced him the assassination of the King would bring about world peace and the Second Coming. Although the definition of insanity in law at the time didn’t seemingly apply to Hadfield due to his crime being planned beforehand rather than being the spontaneous act of a man in a permanent state of mania, Erskine challenged the accepted theory and enlisted the testimony of a physician and two surgeons, all of whom agreed Hadfield’s delusional moments were indeed interludes of insanity, ones attributable to the head injuries he’d received in battle. The Judge halted the trial and declared the verdict to be an acquittal, albeit one that would result in Hadfield’s permanent detainment.

James Hadfield was dispatched to the notorious Bedlam Hospital and his case set a precedent that was hastily enshrined in law as the Criminal Lunatics Act 1800. Prior to this, there was no law in place that enabled a defendant acquitted on the grounds of insanity to be detained, however serious the crime; many walked away from court free and were generally taken into the care of their families. Under the existing law, Hadfield could only have been incarcerated under the Vagrancy Act of 1744 if he had been deemed dangerous, though this would not be a life sentence; should he appear to have recovered during his incarceration, he would be eligible for release and could well have another crack at the King. The passing of the new Act allowed Hadfield – and all those who followed – to be legally confined, which James Hadfield was (bar a brief escape) at Bedlam until his death in 1841. The Criminal Lunatics Act 1800 was repealed in 1981, with the detention of what used to be referred to as ‘the criminally insane’ thereafter falling under the Mental Health Act 1983.

Thanks to the landmark case of James Hadfield over 200 years ago, the plea he entered not only changed the legal definition of insanity in criminal terms; it also proved to be the blueprint for subsequent pleas that, in the eyes of the general public, often lead to soft sentences for brutal crimes that appear to warrant indefinite incarceration in prison as opposed to a few years in a secure mental hospital before eventual release. At the moment, we seem to be receiving reports of such cases on an almost daily basis. Just yesterday, the story of Humphrey Burke was reported. In case you missed it, this charming individual was being escorted from Blackfriars Crown Court on charges of attempted robbery, criminal damage and arson in 2015 when he attacked a female custody officer, kicking her in the head so severely that she died of her injuries just two days later. Burke was deemed unfit to stand trial, having been conveniently diagnosed with the winning ticket of paranoid schizophrenia; he was then found guilty of manslaughter by diminished responsibility, yet a mere two years after being handed an indefinite psychiatric hospital order Burke was released. Images of him going about his mundane business in Sainsbury’s and his local gym have understandably enraged the family of the woman whose death he caused, Lorraine Barwell.

The case of Humphrey Burke seems to confirm what many believe to be the injustice inherent in the law as it stands where killers who effectively plead insanity are concerned. It comes hot on the heels of last week’s sentencing of Valdo Calocane, who received a hospital order as a reward for his killing spree in Nottingham, which left three innocent people dead from stab wounds and a further three seriously injured when he ran them over. The charge of manslaughter rather than murder naturally left the families of the victims appalled, but they claimed the charge was presented to them as a fait accompli, with no possibility of it being challenged. During sentencing, the Judge mapped-out what awaited Calocane and made reference to occasional supervised excursions back into society at some future date, should Calocane prove responsive to psychiatric treatment. ‘Any potential discharge to the community would be subject to the careful, independent consideration of the first tier tribunal,’ said Mr Justice Turner. ‘The tribunal will determine whether to release him on condition, that for example, he met his supervising community forensic team regularly, was compliant with his medication, agreed to monitoring by his forensic team, and lived at a particular address.’

The tribunal to which the Judge referred is one of those shady, Star Chamber-type panels making decisions that affect many lives, yet remain a closed shop to the lives they affect. They sit before the criminal in question and decide whether or not he or she is eligible for parole, largely based upon medical evidence and the progress of the prisoner during their confinement. Input and opinion from the family members of the victims is rarely aired when the tribunal sit and announce their findings, and information on details of such hearings is equally hard to come by; said family members with an emotional investment in the outcome are barely taken into consideration, with the mantle of victim having passed to the perpetrator via the support and pampering of the psychiatric profession for the duration of their incarceration. The tribunal relies heavily on the testimony of these professionals and their decision is greatly influenced by it, contrasting with ears deaf to the concerns of the actual victims’ families. This kid gloves approach to the guilty party also extends to the lifelong comfort blanket of anonymity they bestow upon them, along with benefit payments and accommodation to ease their passage back into the community they forfeited their right to belong to.

With the families of victims dependent on whistleblowers to lift at least a little of the veil of secrecy that envelops such tribunals, one is reliant upon guesswork when confronted by a small clique of individuals often displaying mind-boggling naivety when it comes to unleashing dangerous miscreants back into society; but it’s feasible to characterise them as stereotypical middle-class do-gooders forever prioritising the human rights of those utterly indifferent to the human rights of others. It doesn’t take much stretch of the imagination to picture them having the wool pulled over their eyes by a skilled manipulative killer and they are equally manipulated by the glowing reports of the psychiatric overlords whose role in these cases is grossly disproportionate. A jury are not so easily swayed, yet a high-ranking psychiatrist can effectively overrule the allegedly-final decision of a Judge, following in the footsteps of the medical men hired by Thomas Erskine way back in 1800 to alter the outcome of James Hadfield’s trial. The definition of criminal insanity as laid out by that case has been standard ever since, whereby the careful planning of an attempted (or successful) murder is no impediment to proving a killer was not responsible for their actions; however premeditated the crime may have been, it is no bar to grounds of diminished responsibility. This then entitles them to the kind of ‘punishment’ that naturally fuels the feeling that the one element absent from the judicial system in such cases is justice itself.

© The Editor

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

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