A VERY GOOD RIDDANCE

Choosing a title for a post on here and occasionally coming up with an old-school Fleet Street pun of a one can often take more time than penning the post itself. As with selecting an accompanying image I feel best illustrates the piece (or will provoke a titter), getting it right sometimes means a longer delay between writing and posting than I’d care for. It’s not always the case, of course – a title and image that fit can just as easily appear before me as soon as I’m writing the first paragraph; but another factor I now have to contend with is the possibility I’ve used the same title before. Due to the fact the Winegum has been in existence for eight and-a-half years, there are over a thousand posts on here and the odds of me coming up with the same title every once in a while are quite strong. It shouldn’t really matter, and I’m pretty sure few if any readers see a new post and think, ‘Hold on a minute – he’s used that before’; but I confess it does annoy me if I stumble upon an old post and there it is again. Anyway, I digress (what’s new?); the fact is I was convinced the title of the previous post, ‘Living on Borrowed Time’, was too obvious not to have been recycled, but I went for it anyway because it fitted. And it proved to be perfect, even if I didn’t realise the borrowed time upon which Humza Yousaf was living would expire within 48 hours.

The self-pitying crocodile tears that fooled no one when summoned-up by Mrs T and Theresa May as they fell on their own respective swords were in evidence once more when the Scottish First Minister – nicknamed ‘Humza the Brief’ by Andrew Neil – announced his resignation yesterday. Walking the plank before having to endure an expected and humiliating defeat in a no-confidence vote this week, Nicola Sturgeon’s doomed successor enjoyed a mercifully short time in office, serving just thirteen months as Scotland’s unelected dictator. For a man with such a piss-poor record as an SNP Minister – first in Transport and then Health – it’s hard not to wonder how it was he managed to get the gig in the first place; one hesitates to suggest he achieved his goal simply because he ticked all the right boxes that a ‘Progressive’ Party like the SNP prize so highly, but he evidently didn’t get there on the basis of competence or capability. This pompous, humourless, arrogant and egotistical individual has shown the Scottish people the grim reality of what happens when Identitarian zealots grab the reins of power; we’ve already seen what a disaster this has proven to be in Canada and Ireland, but the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reign of Humza the Brief has provided the UK with a nightmarish vision of the kind of leader that awaits the rest of the nation if the dogma that has captured the country’s corporations and institutions is allowed to seize the throne.

A country run by a man who hates the country and its people is not a country in a fit and healthy state, and Humza Yousaf gave every impression from the off that he was ashamed of his nation and its history. Like Brian Clough arriving at Leeds United and hardly endearing himself to the players by telling them to throw their medals in the bin because they hadn’t earned any of them fairly, Humza Yousaf didn’t even bother to disguise his contempt for the Scottish people, exhibiting all the worst traits of the privileged metropolitan snob; tapping in to the cult of victimhood crucial to the Woke mindset, he also rarely wasted an opportunity to wear his oppressed minority credentials by denouncing Scotland’s ‘whiteness’; would he, one wonders, have visited Nigeria and denounced its ‘blackness’? It’s a curious way to introduce yourself to the people you’re supposed to be leading, to play the race card to 96% of the population and say it’s because of them that a Trans Muslim of Colour with Mental Health Issues isn’t managing the Scotland national team. Beyond the SNP inner circle, I should imagine there won’t be a moist eye in any house north of Berwick following Yousaf’s exit – unlike his own tearful resignation performance. Mind you, had Humza the Brief had his way, he could’ve received reports on the private conversations taking place in those houses and dispatched McKnacker to the door should he perceive them as potential ‘Hate Crimes’.

We seem to reside in an age in which those utterly incapable of doing the top political jobs somehow end up with them; Corbyn, Biden, Boris, and Liz Truss spring to mind, but perhaps Humza the Brief is the best/worst example of this depressing trend. The only saving grace to it is that it doesn’t take long before their incompetence is exposed, and Scotland’s outgoing First Minister was gifted with a talent akin to (as The Hollies once memorably put it) King Midas in reverse. From being caught driving without insurance when Transport Minister to calling a striking nurse struggling on a pittance ‘patronising’ when Health Minister to the infamous incident when he publicly accused a nursery of ‘Islamophobia’ because they wouldn’t accept his infant daughter – how dare they? – Humza Yousaf already had a track record of gaffes and bungles that made it blatantly clear he wasn’t cut out for high office, not to mention numerous examples of his vain, entitled hubris that that revealed what a complete c**t he was. However, as Wee Ms Krankie’s anointed heir, Yousaf was earmarked for the post he duly proceeded to spend a year blundering his way through, and ending the power-sharing agreement with the Scottish Greens that precipitated his swift downfall was a characteristic misfire destined to end in tears.

According to reports, the decision to curtail the Bute House Agreement was greeted with cheers by many SNP members who had grown weary of a Party that had tested even the SNP’s twisted ideological agenda. The Scottish Greens are England’s Green Party turned up to eleven; the SNP entering into a coalition with them was like a governing Labour Party entering into a coalition with Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion in England; they’re that extreme when it comes to living their lives by the diktats of St Greta. Giving a collection of middle-class eco-fear mongers a slice of power was disastrous for the Scottish people – not to mention the SNP’s poll ratings – so one can understand the desire of Humza Yousaf to bring the arrangement to an end; the problem with this decision was that Yousaf had not exactly endeared himself to anyone outside of his Holyrood court, and the fact the SNP had depended upon Green support to ensure their own survival in government meant the end of the coalition left both the First Minister and his Party in a perilous position. It goes without saying Yousaf will be replaced via another internal election in which the Scottish electorate have no say; but the Scottish electorate, as with the UK as a whole, deserve better.

READER’S DIGEST (1938-2024)

Magazines – remember them? I used to buy quite a few at one time, everything from music mainstays like Uncut and Mojo to Vogue (which I liked because of ‘the articles’, obviously); then, with the exception of Private Eye and the Radio Times, I just stopped buying them at some point around a decade or so ago. It didn’t help that they were becoming increasingly expensive, but I guess, like a lot of people, I found the information contained within their pricey pages was easier (and cheaper) to access online. Long after one ceases to fork out for such items, it’s strangely comforting to realise they still exist; therefore, when one abruptly folds, one is overcome with a sudden rush of nostalgia. The news that the UK edition of Reader’s Digest is to end after 86 years comes as something of a shock in that I didn’t realise this one-time fixture of the waiting rooms in GP’s surgeries (not to mention my grandparents’ shelves) was still being published. Collecting articles from periodicals around the world and reproducing them in a convenient, bite-size compilation, Reader’s Digest hit on a winning formula that made it a familiar sight in households that harboured modest intellectual aspirations back in the 50s, 60s and 70s; along with National Geographic, it was a handy window into a world its readers weren’t prepared to invest in any further than a mere monthly sample at an affordable price. As relatively recently as 2000, Reader’s Digest could still sell over a million copies in the UK a month, but that world, along with Reader’s Digest itself, is now evidently gone.

© The Editor

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

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LIVING ON BORROWED TIME

Elected on the strength of a promise yet to be delivered, the SNP has always relied upon its raison d’être as a form of insurance that will guarantee it the enduring support of Scots who dream of breaking away from the UK. This enticing carrot dangled before the Scottish electorate means the Party has been routinely free to exert its inherent authoritarianism, to push ahead with increasingly illiberal proposals and legislation, safe and secure in the knowledge that the pro-independence brigade will always forgive it like a parent always forgives a wayward child who happens to be the favourite. The Gender Recognition Reform Bill, the Hate Crime and Public Order Act, the notion of the State appointing a ‘named person’ to effectively raise (indoctrinate?) children instead of their parents – it’s hard to imagine these and a raft of other insane ideas gaining any sort of traction had they not been proposed by a Party that knows it can get away with it. Well, maybe the SNP has been guilty of a little complacency when it comes to this bedrock of support, convinced its most devoted followers will turn a blind eye to what they don’t like because the Party has always promised to fight for the one thing they do.

The murky financial affairs that provoked a police investigation and culminated in the arrest of both former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, former SNP Chief Executive Peter Murrell last year culminated in Mr Sturgeon being charged with embezzlement of Party funds a couple of weeks ago. The saintly Sturgeons have now been tainted by corruption, just as Wee Ms Krankie’s predecessor Alex Salmond was tainted by sexual assault allegations (which he was eventually acquitted of) – all of which has the unhealthy aroma of the same sleaze one would ordinarily associate with the SNP’s bête noire, the Conservative Party. How holier than thou. And now the sham of an alleged alternative to the nest-featherers of Westminster has been exposed once more as the SNP have mirrored the Labour Party in scaling back their unrealisable Net Zero commitments, perhaps belatedly becoming aware that embracing a trendy cause might win brownie points with the chattering classes but won’t necessarily win the votes of the masses; sharing Holyrood with the Scottish Greens has been the first casualty of this U-turn, ending a cuckoo coalition in place since 2021.

As First Minister Humza Yousaf took it upon himself to curtail the Bute House agreement, Lorna Slater, co-leader of the Greens, declared ‘We no longer have confidence in a progressive government in Scotland doing the right thing for climate and nature.’ Her partner-in-whine Patrick Harvie said that Yousaf ‘needs to bear the consequences of that reckless and damaging decision’; the decision in question saw Yousaf pre-empt the Greens by scrapping the arrangement before his disgruntled coalition colleagues beat him to it, catching them by surprise. ‘He still hasn’t really given any clarity on why he made such a dramatic U-turn and broken a promise on which he was elected as First Minister,’ said Harvie. ‘So it’s very difficult to see how you can have a conversation that leads to a constructive outcome on the basis of that lack of trust.’ Emboldened by the sudden switch of allegiances at Holyrood, opposition parties can smell blood and Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross has lodged a motion of no confidence in Humza Yousaf, a vote scheduled to take place next week. Jackie Baillie, deputy Labour leader north of the border says Yousaf is finished, but wants an election rather than the SNP echoing the Westminster Tories by simply replacing the leader without any contribution from the electorate. ‘We’ve had enough,’ she said. ‘It’s not just Humza Yousaf; it’s actually his entire government that’s failing.’

The First Minister has retaliated by accusing the Tories of game-playing, claiming the coalition has served its purpose and has survived in government 19 times longer than Liz Truss managed in Downing Street; then again, a lettuce lasted longer than Liz Truss managed in Downing Street, so as boasts go it’s not a great advert for an administration. Following the end of the power-sharing arrangement, the Scottish Greens have now vowed not to back the beleaguered Yousaf in the no-confidence vote, something the SNP MSPs initially didn’t appear to have anticipated when they welcomed their leader’s decision. Despite giving their support to some of the SNP’s more bonkers proposals in recent years, both Labour and the Lib Dems will be voting against Yousaf; the race-baiting First Minister will be dependent on abstentions and the loyalty of his own MSPs to get him over the line in what threatens to be an extremely tight vote, though a crucial intervention could come from the woman he beat to the leadership of the Party, Ash Regan. Whereas the Greens also claimed their disillusionment with government was exacerbated by the Scottish NHS suspending the prescribing of puberty blockers to ‘trans kids’ in the wake of the Cass Review’s findings – yes, these are the kind of people the SNP was happy to get into bed with – Ash Regan, who left the SNP and joined Alex Salmond’s Alba Party, is opposed to gender self-identification and has vowed to ‘defend the rights of women and children’.

When Ash Regan defected to Alba, Humza Yousaf said the departure of the former SNP Minister was ‘not a particularly great loss’ to the Party, but Alex Salmond says that his Party’s sole MSP is ‘the most powerful MSP in the Scottish Parliament’ now that Yousaf has managed to alienate all the opposition; regarding Humza Yousaf’s role in terminating the power-sharing agreement with the Greens, Salmond added, ‘His tactics today have been Kamikaze. If Humza Yousaf was a horse I wouldn’t be backing him.’ The SNP can count 63 MSPs, whilst their opponents number 65. Humza Yousaf might be publicly vowing to fight on and refusing to resign should the vote next week go against him, but his position is somewhat precarious. If the Tories, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens all stick to their guns and vote against him en masse, he may well be forced to reach out to Ash Regan and bow to her demands in exchange for her support, weakening his dwindling authority even further in the process. Although a defeat in the no-confidence vote is not binding and Yousaf will not be obliged to stand down, he would be expected to do so. Labour leader Anas Sarwar said, ‘It’s a matter now of when – not if – Humza Yousaf will step down as First Minister. It would be untenable for the SNP to assume it can impose another unelected First Minister on Scotland.’

Although Humza Yousaf is up against it at Holyrood, the SNP’s main man south of the border, Stephen Flynn, has declared the First Minister will ‘come out fighting’ and has stated he will not stand for the SNP leadership himself in what he sees as the unlikely event of Yousaf losing the vote and walking the plank. With the balance of power potentially resting in the hands of his one-time leadership rival, Humza Yousaf will no doubt spend the next few days scrabbling around Holyrood making desperate promises to opposition parties in order to secure his survival, probably dreading having to go cap in hand to Ash Regan if all else fails. Were the vote to result in a draw, there won’t be a penalty shootout or even a replay, but the Presiding Officer will vote in favour of preserving the status quo. Should that be the way Humza Yousaf clings on to power, heading a minority administration and faced with the fact that one half of Holyrood voted for him to go, he can hardly lead the SNP into the upcoming General Election dreaming of victory. With Scottish Labour also intending to hold a vote of no confidence in the Scottish Government as a whole, one which could provoke an election should it succeed, the omens do not look especially optimistic for the First Minister at the moment; and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

© The Editor

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

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2’s COMPANY

Despite the opportunistic rebranding of tat as ‘vintage’, charity shops still occasionally unearth little gems that sneak under the eBay radar and are picked-up by grateful punters bereft of an ulterior motive; a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon an entry in the long-running and collectable ‘Observer’s Book of…’ series, a 1980 reprint of 1973’s ‘London’, complete with a suitably avuncular Yeoman Gaoler on the cover. These nifty little pocket book guides were published on a variety of subjects between 1937 and 1982, with a one-off revival as recent as 2003; this particular copy cost me a quid. It reminded me that, even now, it remains possible to locate such items for next-to-nothing, regardless of the change in approach that came via the negative impact of Mary Portas and her reality TV assault on the charity shop ethos around 15 years ago. When I first began to frequent high-street bargain-bins in the 80s, it seemed everything on sale was a giveaway because nobody really wanted anything in there (bar amateur antiquarians such as myself), and one fascinating fossil I found back then cost me 70p, an item that had originally retailed at 6/- when published in 1963. It was the BBC Handbook 1964, looking ahead to an especially eventful year as the Corporation prepared to launch its second television channel.

The early 60s had been tough for the BBC. Not only had the arrival of ITV in 1955 broken the Beeb’s 20-year monopoly of British television, but the populist manner of commercial TV’s instant connection with a viewing public eager for choice had seen a mass defection to the other side; there was also a blow dealt to the BBC’s three radio networks with the arrival of pirate radio, playing non-stop contemporary pop rather than serving listeners tantalising rations of it sandwiched between hours of archaic Light music aimed at middle-aged housewives. The BBC’s first response to this attack on its dominance was to shake-up its TV output by calling time on the 50s with adventurous new programmes like ‘Z Cars’, ‘Steptoe and Son’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘That Was The Week That Was’; its next move was to launch a second television service, albeit one that wasn’t intended to compete with the huge viewing figures of ITV. The aim of BBC2 was to offer a highbrow option compared to what was largely perceived as the downmarket ‘Americanisation’ of British television by the Beeb’s rivals. The 1964 BBC Handbook says, ‘BBC2 will be complimentary to BBC1 (as the existing service will come to be known) in the sense of providing an alternative and different programme for the viewer at any time when both services are on the air. Its scope will be as wide as BBC1 and will cover the whole range of what the public has come to expect from a comprehensive and national television service.’

One of the main difficulties the BBC faced with the advent of BBC2 was their intention for the second channel to transmit on the superior 625-line system as opposed to the standard 405-line system both BBC1 and ITV used (and the system the majority of the nation’s sets were produced to receive). 625-line TV was already fairly standard in Europe, but in the UK it meant transmitters would have to be altered to accommodate the UHF band that 625-lines were broadcast on, as opposed to the VHF band that handled 405-line TV. The BBC were looking to the future, primarily of colour television; but in 1964 625-line TV was an expensive luxury requiring the kind of investment on the viewers’ behalf that needed enticing programming, something that BBC2 didn’t appear to have as far as the average TV audience was concerned. The eccentric schedule for the station’s intended opening night on 20 April 1964 included a production of ‘Kiss Me Kate’ starring Howard Keel; 45 minutes of a fellow called Arkady Raikin – who was billed as ‘the Soviet Union’s leading comedian’ – accompanied by The Leningrad Miniature Theatre Company; there was a live fireworks display from Southend Pier; and there was also ‘The Alberts’ – a surreal comedy/musical ensemble who were associates of both Spike Milligan and Ivor Cutler and who were fresh from a West End show titled ‘An Evening of British Rubbish’.

An additional hurdle hampering the launch of BBC2 was the fact its initial transmissions were restricted to the Crystal Palace transmitter in South London. As the 1964 Handbook admits, ‘It will be some years before complete national coverage of BBC2 can be achieved, but it will be extended from London and the South-East to the Midlands in 1965 and it is hoped to cover some 75 percent of the country’s population by 1966/67.’ A map in that week’s issue of the Radio Times shows the signal from Crystal Palace radiating as far north as Saffron Walden in Essex, but no further. So, not a lot there that promised to challenge the BBC’s reputation as an elitist, middle-class service catering for the Home Counties; I doubt ITV’s franchise holders felt threatened by its arrival. Then, come the opening night, the final disaster struck. About half-an-hour before BBC2 was scheduled to begin broadcasting at 7.20pm, there was a huge power failure caused by a fire at Battersea Power Station; most of West London experienced a blackout, including the Underground Central Line and – more importantly from the BBC’s perspective – Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush.

At the time of the blackout, BBC1 had already switched to its regional centres for local news programmes, so the senior service continued to be received by viewers outside of London; once everyone realised what was happening, network broadcasting then switched to Alexandra Palace, the site of the BBC’s TV beginnings 30 years before. Periodical bulletins were issued on BBC2 from Alexandra Palace as the few who could receive it waited for programmes to begin, but the decision was eventually taken to postpone the launch till the following day. Rumours swiftly circulated this had been a dirty trick by ITV, a revenge attack for the BBC stealing the headlines on ITV’s launch night in 1955, when the dramatic death of Grace Archer shocked the-then far larger radio audience; but nothing was ever proved. With the intended opening a write-off, a new children’s series aimed at the pre-school viewer, ‘Play School’, therefore became the first-ever BBC2 programme by default when it went ahead at 11.00am on 21 April 1964. When the service belatedly began proper at 7.20 that evening with ‘Line-Up’, the first image viewers saw was a candle that was then blown out by presenter Denis Tuohy before uttering the immortal words, ‘Good evening. This is BBC2.’

The new channel’s commitment to innovative programming was soon reflected in two contrasting successes – the heavyweight documentary series, ‘The Great War’ (which benefitted from the fact there were still plenty veterans of the conflict alive in the mid-60s) and ‘The Likely Lads’, a sitcom that put the vogue for The North on the small-screen in a comedic context for the first time. But it wasn’t until David Attenborough accepted the offer to step back from the camera and become BBC2 controller in 1965 that the landmark programmes for which the channel’s eclectic early years remain defined by were produced. Amongst those that appeared on Attenborough’s watch were ‘The Forsyte Saga’, ‘Civilisation’, ‘Alistair Cooke’s America’, ‘The Ascent of Man’, ‘Man Alive’, ‘Call My Bluff’, ‘The Money Programme’, ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’, ‘The Goodies’, and ‘Pot Black’. The latter series, as with BBC2’s Wimbledon coverage, couldn’t have happened without 1967’s shift into colour broadcasting, another innovation Attenborough oversaw.

BBC2 today, as with the television landscape as a whole, is a very different beast indeed; a cursory glance at the channel’s schedule on the day of its 60th birthday finds a trio of lunchtime cookery programmes, live snooker and women’s rugby, and a glut of repeats intended to mark the anniversary. Part of me wishes ‘the Soviet Union’s leading comedian’ was amongst them, but not so, alas. Happy birthday, then, BBC2; I knew you when you were worth watching.

© The Editor

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PRETTY VAGRANT

‘The League of Gentlemen’, that superb 1960 British caper movie with a delicious dollop of black comedy, highlighted the irony of how particular talents that are valued in wartime are rendered redundant once peace comes around. The bitter ex-Army officer character played by Jack Hawkins, given his cards by his superiors due to there being precious little for him to do anymore, attempts to get his own back on the establishment that abandoned him by assembling a motley crew of former war heroes whose post-war careers on Civvy Street have seen them drift aimlessly on the seedy fringes of society, gifted with skills that peacetime has no outlet for. He surmises the only outlet left for those skills is to use them for criminal means via an audacious bank raid; and all goes well up until the inevitable climax when the team is naturally foiled by the boys in blue. The film tapped into a dead-end that confronted the demobbed when returning to ‘normal life’, though this wasn’t a sensation unique to the aftermath of WWII. A rarely-mentioned side-effect of the end of the Napoleonic Wars brought about by the victory of Waterloo in 1815 was the decommissioning of His Majesty’s Forces, men who suddenly had nowhere to go once their country no longer needed them to do their duty. After 20 years of battling post-Revolutionary France, a battle that necessitated a constant supply of cannon-fodder, Britain received an influx of bewildered and often mutilated men for whom there was no safety net in place.

For all the reverence in which the ruling class held Waterloo, the men that had contributed to victory in Europe were effectively left to their own devices thereafter; the sorry spectacle of maimed ex-servicemen begging on street corners and in shop doorways was a commonplace sight in the decade following the Duke of Wellington’s finest hour. By 1824, the government of the day decided to crack down on the problem not by providing homes for heroes, but by introducing the Vagrancy Act, making rough sleeping and begging a criminal offence. The problem of ‘vagrants’ had also been exacerbated by the Industrial Revolution, in which large sections of the workforce had been deemed surplus to requirements via new machinery able to do their jobs quicker and cheaper. Moreover, the imposition of the Corn Laws and the Enclosures Act had had a catastrophic effect on those who worked the land, forcing the destitute from the countryside into towns as they desperately sought employment, competing for attention on English streets alongside economic migrants from Ireland and Scotland.

The criminalisation of homelessness that the 1824 Vagrancy Act instituted also included prostitution, but the Act was routinely expanded throughout the 19th century to cover a multitude of social problems, and something that was initially restricted to England and Wales encompassed the whole of the UK by 1871. The original Vagrancy Act was repealed in Scotland in 1981 and Northern Ireland repealed the section outlawing begging and vagrancy in 1990; but as far as the rest of the UK goes, it still applies. Prosecutions have increased in recent years, though a case which received substantial press coverage in 2014, concerning three homeless men arrested for taking discarded food from a skip and bins outside a branch of Iceland supermarkets in London, was dropped by the CPS; to many, it seemed to be antiquated legislation of basic meanness from a less compassionate age, punishing those whose circumstances were already so desperate they’d been forced to locate a meal in a bloody skip. At 200 years old, homeless charities argue the 1824 Vagrancy Act has outlived its usefulness and should be repealed altogether; the Government’s response has been the new Criminal Justice Bill.

You might recall that during the first phase of the pandemic there was a sudden rush to ‘protect lives’, which included providing accommodation for the nation’s rough sleepers – as though they’d never needed such help before Covid. A couple of years later, MPs voted to repeal the Vagrancy Act, with the Government delaying action in order to devise new means of ending rough sleeping once and for all; what they’ve devised gives police powers to fine (up to £2,500), move on or incarcerate anyone ‘intending’ to sleep rough, giving the ‘appearance’ of having slept rough, or emitting an ‘excessive smell’ that might suggest a lengthy detachment from home comforts. Sounds like progress, and should definitely bring to an end what Suella Braverman once referred to as ‘a lifestyle choice’! The fallout of the financial and social meltdown caused by a lockdown that was instigated and imposed by government ruined more lives than we probably yet know about, and it’s unarguable that the ramifications of that disastrous decision – one taken without any consultation with the public whatsoever, lest we forget – caused many to lose homes they’ll never regain.

The latest survey carried out by the Government into homelessness listed almost 4,000 people sleeping rough on the streets of England on just one night – a 27% increase from the year before; studies also estimate over 242,000 households are experiencing homelessness in one shape or another, from sofa-surfing to residing in temporary accommodation. So, one would think this is the ideal time for a humane interjection by the powers-that-be, yet in replacing an Act that was introduced to punish the casualties of a social crisis rather than resolve it, Rishi Sunak appears to be following in the footsteps of Lord Liverpool in 1824. 37 housing and homelessness charities have written to James Cleverly – currently Home Secretary, in case you haven’t kept up (who has?) – telling him that this legislation ‘risks stigmatising people forced to sleep on the streets and pushing them away from help’. Matt Downie, Chief Executive of Crisis, says: ‘The Government cites a moral imperative to end rough sleeping, yet these new measures will make it more difficult to do so. They will punish people for having nowhere else to go and push them further away from support. If we focus on the solutions that work – building safe and stable social housing and investing in specialist support that helps people keep their home – we can end rough sleeping. But the first and easiest thing the Home Secretary can do is listen to the concerns of these experienced organisations and remove these cruel and counterproductive measures.’

In response to this criticism, the current Health Secretary, Victoria Atkins – who has the look of the sort of nonentity handed such a post by a dying administration with no remaining heavyweights – retorted with scripted reassurances. ‘We have been very, very clear,’ she said. ‘We want to stop some of the aggressive begging that can happen around cash points, for example, but we do not and will not criminalise people who don’t have a home – absolutely not. That is not what this bill is about. We are absolutely not criminalising people who sleep on the streets…what we want to do is support them into supportive accommodation because many people who are living rough have complex needs.’ Whether or not that’s the genuine intention of this legislation, it’s difficult to accept the sincerity of such a statement merely because it’s difficult to accept anything a politician says as sincere; and I have to admit to hearing Nicola Murray, the hapless Minister that the fearsome spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker is saddled with in ‘The Thick of It’, particularly the episode where she declares she wants to ‘inspire people out of poverty’.

One can’t help but feel the wording of the proposals could have been a little better; a term such as ‘nuisance begging’, coupled with the prospect of arresting someone ‘looking like they are intending to sleep on the streets’, just has the undeniable odour of a classic Tory plan to penalise people who aren’t in a position to fight back – a last throw of the reactionary dice in a desperate bid to prove they’re still ‘the Party of Law and Order’. But even if they wooed back a few estranged old UKippers to the fold by dragooning the homeless into spanking new workhouses, the Nasty Party has still blown it; and the homeless are still without a roof over their heads.

© The Editor

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

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THE RECKONING

If the current trend for everyone who ever lived before us being judged on the social and moral mores of our times rather than their own continues, one wonders how the present day will fare in the future’s cultural courtroom. How many individuals and attitudes will be found not guilty and how many will be condemned to eternal damnation without the hope of redemption? I’ve long suspected some of these individuals and attitudes will eventually be cast in the same negative light as those they themselves retrospectively demonise, yet for the vast majority of folk – who don’t control the means of mass communication or run corporations and institutions – the insanity of this ascendancy to positions of power and influence was both baffling and concerning from the off. Most of us already knew this wasn’t a good idea, but the sheer weight of propaganda relentlessly streaming from the platforms the masses depend upon – along with the vicious attack dogs those platforms can summon – has marginalised and suppressed dissenting voices and encouraged self-censorship. But were one to look into the crystal ball, it’s evident that today’s indulged ideologues are tomorrow’s slave-traders or eugenics advocates; today’s dogmatic mantras are tomorrow’s discredited belief systems.

One day, all but a diminishing smatter of nostalgic fanatics will look back to now with a shake of the head and wonder how it was that the leader of a major political party couldn’t define a woman when asked point-blank to do so during a radio interview or that another declared women could have penises; or that men would be allowed to enter women’s sports and unsurprisingly wipe the floor with the competition; or that the BBC could broadcast an educational film telling children there were over 200 genders; or that convicted rapists could simply proclaim they identified as female and be admitted to women’s prisons, or that the MSM, the police, the judiciary and the victims of such men would be forced to refer to them as ‘she’ in order not to offend their human rights as the female stats for sexual crimes would soar due to the addition of men posing as women. How will tomorrow’s jury view terms like ‘bleeders’ or ‘birthing persons’? How will they judge a self-proclaimed oppressed minority composed largely of middle-class men with a fetish for aping the stereotypical tropes of the opposite sex and erasing its hard-won rights in the process? How will they react to the fact that men were given a free pass into women’s and girl’s private spaces such as toilets or changing rooms, and that any women raising an objection would be branded bigots and hounded on social media?

How will they regard an age that aggressively policed Hate Crime yet turned a blind eye to women subjected to rape and death threats simply for having the gall to air an opinion contrary to the consensus, or that lesbians could be discouraged from participating in Pride events or be barred from holding speed-dating evenings because they refused to admit men in drag, or how prominent gays in the village could be cast out into the wilderness for questioning the wisdom of butchering children, of brainwashing sexually-confused adolescents into believing their nascent symptoms of homosexuality were an indication they needed to transition? This sinister and grotesque conversion therapy, promoted by ghastly parents desperate to signal their virtue, by immoral organisations like Stonewall and Mermaids, and – most unforgivably of all – by our glorious NHS, is at the heart of the most comprehensive study into the madness of the moment and one that will hopefully help reset the controls for common sense, the Cass Review.

This 388-page report into England’s gender identity clinics for the under-18s by Dr Hilary Cass was published last week; although dealing with a specific area of the issue, the findings of this landmark review will have far wider consequences as the scandal of the state-sponsored sterilisation of children finally, belatedly, goes over-ground and people are able to speak out against it without fear of losing everything in the process. The first whistleblower to expose the truth of what was going on in the notorious, now-closed Tavistock Clinic was mental-health nurse Susan Evans as far back as 2004. 20 f***ing years ago! Since then, the infiltration of our institutions by this dogma has enabled the ideologically-driven heirs to Dr Josef Mengele to experiment on vulnerable teens pushed into places like Tavistock following constant exposure to the fallacy of ‘gender affirmation’ via the online foot-soldiers and numerous non-binary salespeople, prescribed puberty blockers and eventually submitted for castration. Around 50 kids, mostly boys, fell under the radar of the Gender Identity Development Service at Tavistock in 2009; just seven years later, this number had risen to nearer 2,000 – with girls beginning to outnumber boys. The Cass Review has calculated 89% of girls and 81% of boys referred to this disgraced service were either gay or bisexual, earmarked for a transition their leanings never warranted. This was something – to use a hackneyed phrase – ‘hiding in plain sight’ for the best part of two decades, yet it has taken a measured, rational report of unarguable, detailed data by a medical academic to wrestle this subject free of the ‘bigotry’ that any opposing voices have been besmirched with by the dominant narrative for far too long; and its impact is already seeing many an about-turn by those who either said nothing or went with the flow.

To Trans Activists, the Cass Review will be held up as yet one more example of persecution that emphasises their imaginary oppression and thus preserves their precious faux-victimhood. To the rest of the world, it’s the long-overdue voice of reason that has the official seal of approval, unlike those brave souls who dared to pop their head above the parapet in isolation and were bombarded by the slings and arrows of entitled zealots without any support from their cowardly colleagues, who ducked down in shameless self-preservation and abandoned them to the wolves. The likes of Graham Linehan, creator of some of the most successful sitcoms of recent decades such as ‘Father Ted’, ‘Black Books’ and ‘The IT Crowd’, was a self-confessed Liberal Leftie who felt the full force of the lunatics promoted to the running of the asylum when he questioned the direction his long-time political position was heading in; disgracefully dumped by those he’d long imagined to be his ideological allies, Linehan saw his career grind to a full stop and has spent the past few years battling on alone.

Then, of course, there’s JK Rowling – another celebrity Leftie that the Left’s embrace of this toxic social engineering has exiled from the fold. In its perennial hunt for oppressed victims to patronise, the Left found a self-manufactured minority and anyone who quickly discerned the flaws in this ‘stunning and brave’ new world was dispensed with in the kind of purge even Stalin would have thought a bit severe. Rowling’s response to the opportunistic change of tack by certain guilty parties in the wake of the Cass Review’s publication has been delicious to witness, particularly her reaction to the prospect of those ungrateful little shits Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson seeking some sort of rapprochement. Basically, Rowling will not be crossing over any burned bridges in the event of those who owe her everything rebuilding them. She has been equally determined in her fearless stance against Scotland’s ludicrous Hate Crime bill. Good for her.

Similar to so-called ‘Anti-racism’, which advocates racial segregation without a hint of irony, the hardline Trans lobby claims to be all about ‘women’, yet it is bona-fide women who have the nerve to stand up for their rights that receive the most blisteringly misogynistic bile from these demented chicks with dicks – and its inherent homophobia has equally alienated gay men and women who could previously rely on the likes of Stonewall to act on their behalf. Just as militant vegans give vegetarians a bad name with their utter inability to refrain from lecturing and hectoring or refusal to accept that not everyone will automatically fall in line with their thinking, Trans Activists have done nothing but damage the progress of genuine transsexuals within society towards quiet acceptance, the majority of whom merely want to get on with their lives. The Cass Review will not affect overnight change of the prevailing trend dictated by the captured establishment – the trend is too deeply embedded for that; but it’s one hell of a good start.

© The Editor

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TAKE YOUR PICK

Whichever way one looks at it, the past fortnight has not been great when it comes to highlighting the ‘moral fibre’ of our elected representatives. Across the Irish Sea in that outpost of Albion known as Ulster, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has been forced to resign after being charged with rape and other ‘historical sex offences’, despite the fact the latter charge always sounds like something that should be levelled at a dead Viking. On the mainland, Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner has been caught in Fleet Street’s headlights due to a property she sold back in 2015; accused of not paying the correct amount of capital gains tax on the house during the sale, the question of breaking the law or submitting false information depends upon whether or not the house was her principal residence at the time; most of us have to settle for just the one, but there you go. Anyway, this old news was primarily stirred-up by former Conservative Party chairman Lord Ashcroft, who incidentally avoided paying £112m in UK tax from 2000 to 2010 on account of his non-dom status. The theory previously aired by our old friend Mudplugger that most Labour scandals stem from financial affairs whilst most Tory ones tend to concern ‘Ugandan discussions’ appears to ring true with regards to the current woes of Conservative MP and vice-chairman of the 1922 Committee, William Wragg.

Wragg is the nondescript backbencher who has recently come clean about the fact he passed on the personal phone numbers of fellow MPs to a stranger he engaged with on gay dating app Grindr, a man to whom he’d already sent what one presumes were ‘dick pics’. Displaying a staggeringly naive approach to his own vulnerability as a public servant – an approach that even Huw Edwards would probably view as a tad foolish – Wragg claims that once this shadowy individual was in possession of said compromising images he then began demanding the numbers of other MPs; fearing exposure, the MP for the Greater Manchester seat of Hazel Grove capitulated and consented to the request because he was ‘scared’. Upwards of a dozen unnamed men believed to include a Government Minister as well as the odd SPAD and a few journalists embedded in Westminster Village life were then allegedly contacted by the same man, with some apparently flattered enough by the attention to respond with a few dick pics of their own. Do these fools never learn? ‘I got chatting to a guy on an app and we exchanged pictures,’ said Wragg. ‘We were meant to meet up for drinks, then didn’t. Then he started asking for numbers of people. I was worried because he had stuff on me…I’ve hurt people by being weak. I was scared. I’m mortified. I’m so sorry that my weakness has caused other people hurt.’

It’s probably just as well Wragg is standing down as an MP at the next General Election, for his actions have served to further reinforce the ongoing image of the Tories as a political party in an irreversible state of decay. No doubt he’s already blaming his lapse of judgement on ‘mental health issues’, the chic get-out-of-jail card for absolving public figures of responsibility for their actions. Richard Tice, leader of Reform UK yesterday referred to the Tories as having ‘a bunch of sexual weirdos permeating’ in a bid to deflect negative attention away from his own party, which has dropped a dozen of its intended candidates for the Election. Their alleged crimes were not being caught with their hands in the till or their trousers round their ankles, but offensive posts on social media, apparently of a racist nature. Tice also threw in references to the Labour Party’s anti-Semitism issue as a further way of pointing out neither of the two major parties can adopt a holier-than-thou stance as they paint Reform as the latest home for all the loony right-wingers the Conservative Party is no longer welcoming to.

When asked if he felt Reform’s vetting system needed a thorough going-over, Tice emphasised the problems faced by the limited budgets of the smaller parties in comparison to the money Labour or the Tories can pour into a campaign – of which the vetting process for candidates is a casualty. ‘It’s more difficult for a small, entrepreneurial party,’ he said. ‘We haven’t got £30-40m a year like the Tory Party and the Labour Party have got to do their vetting. We operate on a fraction of that. That’s why we welcome the extra scrutiny.’ Tice declared Reform was ‘the fastest party to get rid of candidates’ in the event of inappropriate behaviour, and considering the time it took Labour to wake-up to their intended man in Rochdale, he could have a fair point – though so many candidates being given the boot doesn’t do much for Reform’s reputation. Amodio Amato had been selected for Stevenage until he claimed Sadiq Khan would be running a Muslim army should Labour win the Election; Pete Addis was chosen for South Shropshire before he was found to have made sexist and racial remarks on social media; north of the border, Iris Leask was earmarked for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine until she opined that ex-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace ‘should be left to die in Afghanistan’. Richard Tice’s response was that ‘every party has its fair share of muppets and morons.’ Quite.

Whatever its politics, Reform faces the same uphill struggle as any small party in a first-past-the-post system; not only that, but whenever any small party appealing to disillusioned voters from either Left or Right begins to gain traction, the Tories or Labour then attempt to woo such voters back by stealing some of the policies that had tempted these voters away in the first place. It’s not unlike the way in which a newly-promoted club to the Premier League takes everyone by surprise, finishes in the top half of the table and then, come the close-season, sees the big guns swoop in and scoop up the team’s best players and – in some cases – their manager. Despite being in existence since evolving from the old Brexit Party in 2020, Reform has yet to acquire a presence in Westminster and only six of its hundreds of candidates won a seat in last year’s local elections. One might say Reform – like the Brexit Party before it – is still seen by many as a single issue party; it was virtually the sole dissenting political voice during the pandemic and in some respects remains portrayed as the anti-lockdown party, despite broadening its agenda post-Covid to include opposition to Net Zero and illegal immigration – issues that have a far more negative impact on a vast swathe of the electorate than any of the major parties will acknowledge.

Perhaps Reform also suffers from the absence of arguably its greatest asset in getting its message across to the people, i.e. Nigel Farage, who remains a household name and – regardless of his Marmite qualities – a figure many will listen to when he speaks; Reform’s founder and honorary president has access to platforms no other character on the Right bereft of a seat in Parliament can boast of, yet has refused to commit to any sort of frontline role during the General Election. The Tories must be heaving a sigh of relief at this, but they’re still anxious that Reform will contribute towards the loss of Conservative-held seats, chiselling away at the Tory vote till it splits, thus potentially handing these seats to either Labour or the Lib Dems, depending on the constituency. There’s no doubt the deep discontent many voters feel about the state of the nation is not being satisfied by the major parties, so the pull of an alternative is understandable; but when the only headlines a party like Reform receives concerns candidates being ejected for racist tweets, its enemies can simply say, ‘told you so’, and many may simply write off Reform as merely another collection of ex-UKIP ‘fruitcakes’ (© David Cameron), left to reluctantly opt for the usual suspects instead. And what a morally-upstanding bunch they are.

© The Editor

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THE RUNNERS AND RIDERS

During his star turn as the waspish comic relief to Cliff Michelmore’s straight man in the BBC’s 1970 General Election coverage, Robin Day’s relish at the pollsters having got the result so wrong was impossible for him to contain; at one point he confronted a professional pollster who had supplied what proved to be inaccurate pre-Election forecasts for the Evening Standard and Sunday Times; rounding on the hapless pollster, Day asked ‘Does it matter to you that the people in their wisdom seem to have treated the polls with contempt?’ Whereas professional pollsters relied on tried-and-trusted methods, the 1970 Election was the first time the BBC had attempted asking voters how they voted as they exited the polling station, rather than the usual formula of asking voters how they were going to vote beforehand. Although the phrase ‘Quiet Tories’ hadn’t been coined back then, there were few indications via the old way that so many would choose the Conservatives over Labour, suggesting plenty of those surveyed were reluctant to reveal the truth prior to putting a cross next to their chosen candidate’s name. The Beeb canvassed the electorate of Gravesend on account of it being named the most ordinary constituency in the country, claiming ‘if you know how Gravesend votes, you know how the nation votes’; as it turned out, they were right – and Gravesend swung to the Right, as did the rest of the UK, something the opinion polls failed to predict.

In the run-up to a General Election, it’s obvious that pollsters can only inquire as to the electorate’s eventual intentions well in advance of acting upon them, even if most of us know it’s not a scientifically-accurate barometer as to what they’ll actually do come the day itself. Nevertheless, these findings are then broadcast across MSM outlets and presented as a Mystic Meg-like prophesy, and we’ve certainly seen a great deal of that ever since the countdown to the next hustings shindig has crept closer. According to the latest YouGov findings, the Prime Minister is looking at a Tory defeat on a par with 1997, with YouGov predicting a 154-seat majority for Labour that would see Starmer’s barmy army capture 403 seats to the Conservatives’ 155. Big guns on the blue side we are told may lose their seats include Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, old mainstays like IDS and Jacob Rees-Mogg, and even the much-fancied (in more ways than one) Penny Mordaunt; other current Cabinet members at risk are people you’ve never heard of, like Michelle Donelan and David ‘TC’ Davies, apparently Science Secretary and Welsh Secretary respectively. Last time round, it was Labour that suffered a catastrophic loss whilst Boris led the Tories to a landslide; now it would appear positions are to be completely reversed, even if the ground lost by Labour in 2019 means the Party has a hell of a lot more work to do than the effortless victory pointed to by the polls suggests.

One of the most encouraging factors in the predictions of the pollsters is that Labour could finally oust the SNP and reclaim its former status as the largest party north of the border, estimating 28 Scottish seats to the former and 19 to the latter. The timing of the next Election couldn’t be better from the perspective of those not exactly impressed by the SNP’s governance of Scotland, as this is a party still tarnished by the sordid Alex Salmond affair and the dubious financial dealings of Nicola Sturgeon, not to mention being run into the ground by an Identitarian zealot like new man Humza Yousaf; the notorious Hate Crime bill he endorsed with such vigour came into force on 1 April and has already seen Police Scotland engulfed by 3,800 ‘Hate Crimes’ reported to them in the space of the first three days. Perhaps fittingly, it is the ranting First Minister himself who has been named as a Hate Criminal in many of these complaints, highlighting how the subjective nature of offence will be utterly impossible to police, as well as proving Scots have not lost their sense of humour despite living under such a humourless regime.

In the latest poll, the Lib Dems are projected to increase their seat tally to 49, though the much-hyped new home for the politically stateless – the Reform Party – haven’t fared quite so well, with no seats predicted as falling into their hands, despite reaching their highest poll rating so far on data collated in March by YouGov. This data puts Labour on 40%, the Tories on 21%, Reform UK on 16%, the Lib Dems on 10%, the Greens on 8%, the SNP on 3%, and Plaid Cymru on 1%. The Conservative share of the vote in this poll is the same as the Party had during the disastrous, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it reign of Liz Truss, something which doesn’t really bode well for Rishi Sunak. YouGov has been surveying voters for the past four years and has been able to track the diminishing support for the Tories over that tumultuous period – support which peaked in the early months of the pandemic in 2020, a brief moment of national unity as Boris was hospitalised and the ‘we’re all in this together’ Covid mantra was still bought-into by the majority; at this point, the Tories stood at 53% in the polls. Labour gained control as the injustice of Project Fear hit home, with the Party (led by Sir Keir since April) rising to 40% in November 2020; the vaccine rollout and its accompanying, unquestioned-by-the-MSM hype pushed the Tories back in the lead in the summer of 2021, but the 41% lead evaporated in the wake of the Partygate scandal, with the Party’s standing plummeting to 28% by January 2022.

The fall from (dis) grace of Bo-Jo and the sitcom circus that followed his exit evidently didn’t do well for the Conservative Party’s poll ratings – at one point the Tories slipped as low as 19% whilst Labour shot up to 54% (the day after Truss’s resignation); and the Tories haven’t really recovered since, at least if the stats assembled by YouGov are anything to go by. Like the incumbent leaders of Scotland and Wales, Sunak was not elected PM by the electorate, but internally anointed by his own party, and the lack of involvement of the general public in choosing their Prime Minister probably hasn’t helped. Neither Sunak nor his immediate predecessor were given a mandate by the people – something at least the two other chosen-by-party-members PMs of the past decade (Boris and Theresa May) could claim they received; and whilst by-elections between General Elections are a notoriously unreliable method of measuring how a governing party will fare when the whole nation has a say, the Tories have performed abysmally in the majority of those held since 2019 – an additional factor adding to the overall perception of the Party as a spent force.

An even worse forecast for the Prime Minister came prior to the YouGov poll and was published in last weekend’s Sunday Times; this poll, undertaken by Survation, predicted the outcome of the next General Election would leave the Tories with just 98 seats to Labour’s 468, which would be an unparalleled disaster for a governing party in the modern political era. Compared to that, YouGov’s findings don’t look quite so bad, even if they still predict a comprehensive thrashing from the electorate. Both polls use a method that goes by the catchy name of multilevel regression and post-stratification – mercifully abbreviated to MRP. MRP is currently regarded as the most accurate system of forecasting election results; a large group of people are asked how they’ll vote, the answers are broken down demographically, then these results are used as a basis for calculating an election outcome constituency by constituency, sourcing data on the demographic makeup of the voters in each seat. When used during the 2017 General Election, the MRP prediction was considerably closer to the eventual result than any of the polls based upon more traditional methods, all of which pointed to a sizeable Conservative majority. Whether or not MRP might have appeased Robin Day’s low opinion of pre-election polls is debatable, but at this moment in time it appears to be the gold standard of crystal balls, whether Rishi Sunak likes it or not.

© The Editor

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WITHIN (AND WITHOUT) THESE WALLS

Without wishing this here blog to become a listings guide for Talking Pictures TV – though I admit it’s a tempting alternative to commenting on relentlessly grim contemporary headlines – I’m moved to mention a movie which comfortably slots into the station’s schedules, so much so that it appears to air every few weeks on there. ‘Hell Drivers’ is a gritty B&W British thriller of the late 50s, a low-budget look at the corrupt, corner-cutting haulage industry and the shady figures that profit from it. The film boasts a breath-taking cast of the best character actors this country could offer at the time, including Stanley Baker, Patrick McGoohan, Herbert Lom, William Hartnell, Gordon Jackson, Alfie Bass, Sid James, David McCallum, and even a pre-Bond Sean Connery. The motley crew of drivers employed by the company are incentivised to deliver their goods a minimum of twelve times a day; anyone failing to keep up with the demand is handed their cards whilst anyone exceeding the minimum amount of daily deliveries is favoured by management. Forced into competition with each other, the drivers take their lives in their hands by hurtling along narrow and bumpy country lanes on a 20 mile round-trip at increasingly reckless speeds. As seemingly irrelevant as ‘Hell Drivers’ is to our glorious modern age, its regular presence on TPTV is actually quite prescient with regards to an ongoing spat between elected and electorate that is well and truly under the radar of all but those who stand to be directly affected by it.

I’m constantly reminded of the movie when I receive regular updates on a proposed ‘super’ prison being built in a neighbourhood I know quite well, a project that will necessitate an invasion of HGVs on roads that were basically built to accommodate the humble horse-and-cart in what remains a semi-rural locality; these are roads that can barely cope with the rapid growth in car ownership, let alone pseudo-juggernauts careering along as though driven by Patrick McGoohan’s psychotic ‘Hell Drivers’ character, Red. The most potentially-threatened stretch of the King’s Highway in this particular case is Ulnes Walton Lane, a long and winding road on the outskirts of the Lancashire town of Leyland; it traverses a path through plenty green and pleasant land, but even in its current incarnation is something of a roller-coaster ride for the pedestrian. Having walked up an especially hair-raising section of the Lane a couple of years ago, constant dives into hedges whenever a flotilla of vehicles sped along a road bereft of a pavement implied innumerable accidents were waiting to happen. The prospect of the kind of huge, towering trucks required to deliver the materials for a major building project would only add to the dangerous ambience of the road, meaning those living along Ulnes Walton Lane are understandably up in arms. But their protests appear to be falling on deaf ears where those pushing the project are concerned, i.e. the Government.

Whereas once the likes of the Bastille or Newgate Gaol resided in the heart of cities, almost as though their intimidating presence served as a symbolic reminder for the people as to what fate awaited them should they stray from the path of righteousness, the trend for prisons to be situated a greater distance from the nearest metropolis seems to better emphasise the inmates’ exile from society, if making visiting day more of a headache for family members with urban postcodes. A case in point is HMP Wymott, an establishment that can boast such illustrious alumni as convicted footballing rapist Ched Evans and former ‘It’s a Knockout’ host Stuart Hall; opening its doors in 1979 as a short term Category C prison, Wymott sits on the outer rim of Leyland and was built when there were far fewer residential properties in the area than there are today. In 1988, it was joined by its sister nick, the Category B HMP Garth; but in recent decades, the next-door neighbours have seen what was a sparsely-populated farming community expand into a retreat for those seeking surroundings more picturesque than nearby cities such as Preston. The twin prisons on the community’s doorstep were a reminder of the area’s remote past, when it was an obvious location for keeping criminals far away from the scenes of their crimes; it wouldn’t be suitable for yet another, surely?

The proposal for a third prison to be built on a neighbouring site to the two whose vintage now stretches back to the very different Leyland of the 1970s and 80s naturally upset residents of the vicinity. Despite the incursion of the internal combustion engine, the rural fringe of Leyland is still the kind of place where the first sound one hears on a morning is the clippetty-clop of horse’s hooves rather than the disruptive roar of heavy goods vehicles. Angry residents were additionally alerted to what they’d have to look forward to once forming a campaign group name of Action Against Wymott & Garth 3rd Prison, when they began receiving horror stories from those in different parts of the country, those whose equally rural neighbourhoods had already been disrupted by the early stages of ‘mega-prison’ building. Objections to the Wymott & Garth third prison proposal were voiced early enough to reach the hallowed chambers of the local council, who threw it out over two years ago. However, the Ministry of Justice has held firm in its determination to press on in the face of overwhelming opposition from locals, utterly indifferent to their concerns; an appeal by the MoJ against Chorley Council’s rejection of the proposal was recommended for refusal by an independent planning inspector, but the Secretary of State for Buggering-Up – none other than our old friend Michael Gove – has taken it upon himself to announce that his department will have the final say.

This is a pattern that has been repeated across the country of late whenever any of these ‘super’ or ‘mega’ prisons have been proposed – one earmarked for Market Harborough faced similar opposition to the Leyland plan and was also rejected by the local council, prompting an identical appeal by the MoJ, leading to five delays on the decision as to whether or not it will actually be built. An impression as to what residents can expect if the MoJ succeeds in its roughshod riding comes via HMP Five Wells, open for business a couple of years ago in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire; images of cells that more closely resemble the rooms of a budget B&B are accompanied by descriptions of landscaped gardens, lakeside views, recreational facilities and eco-friendly solar panelling that sound like promotional guff from a holiday camp brochure. All of this obscures the fact that this isn’t supposed to be Butlin’s, but somewhere to house unpleasant individuals allegedly sent there as a punishment. But the whys and wherefores of punishment Vs rehabilitation isn’t really the issue here; it’s not so much the conditions within those walls as to the locations pencilled-in to site them.

Sure, we’re all familiar with the comical sight of so-called NIMBYs being roused whenever news of new housing intended for their greenbelt land is announced, but it’s not quite so amusing to be confronted by the prospect of a 1,700-capacity prison in the next field. Aside from the fact that the Leyland penitentiary is planned as a facility that will prepare inmates for the outside world by allowing some to venture beyond its gates on day release, the combined prison population of the locality if the third prison goes ahead will then outnumber the law-abiding residents – hardly a stat guaranteed to attract people or businesses to the area in the future. And, again, it is the utter unsuitability of the road networks in such places to cope with the immense influx of vehicles that come with this level of construction work which is causing anxiety for the residents. One cannot travel more than a few hundred yards around the area without seeing a banner or a placard opposing the third prison in Leyland, and the campaign group have been relentless in their organised opposition; but it’s clear the MoJ are determined to give it the green light regardless. With a local (Tory) MP in the shape of the uniquely useless Katherine Fletcher having done her best to avoid fighting on behalf of the community she serves only in theory, the resurrected public inquiry into the issue has now been adjourned until the middle of April. But with the final say in the ever-trustworthy hands of ‘Govie’, one feels only the Mr MacKay’s of this world will have a spring in their step by the end of it.

© The Editor

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