OK readers, you can already guess where this diatribe is heading.
I agree that to ‘our’ 650 hangers-on, £1million is the sort of loose change found down the back of their John Lewis expense account sofas. To the rest of us though, here in normal-land, it’s still a good premium bond or lottery windfall.
What I am more concerned about though is the mindset of a Chancellor of the Exchequer (and those he shares his back of a fag packet calculations with) who thinks it is timely to erect a new Second World War memorial, coming up for eighty years after hostilities ended. Did late Victorians still put up new Napoleonic War memorials? I think probably not – like us, they had their own wars to worry about.
Also, as we are fast approaching the same position as most TNC readers will just about remember, when finding an ex serviceman or woman of WWII (I cannot say veteran as this is an awful americanism, that to my British mind conjures up a picture of a man in a white coat with his fingers up a dog’s bum) is steadily becoming as difficult as it became for WWI. Presumably the last surviving verified WWII UK serviceperson will be cynically seized upon by the MSM as a ‘hero or heroine for our times’ and more so if they’ve since transitioned their sex or adopted a new gender identity – particularly, if they aren’t 100% male, pale or stale (or heaven help us, a Brexiteer).
Now, it seems to me as an amateur critical thinker, that the rationale for this new war memorial is not really one of celebrating victory, the sacrifices of our winning combatants or hoping that future war is avoided altogether, but is a futile attempt to curry favour with radical Muslims. I fear ‘don’t hurt us please (especially us MPs)’ is the clear driving force. I don’t think Mr. Hunt got the memo pointing out that the world of Islam isn’t awfully keen on things that are easily, when convenient, reviled as idolatrous Kufir abominations (such as all our other war memorials).
However, as the Prime Minister has recently opined from his oversized podium outside Number 10, we are equally, or even more so, in danger from the ‘extreme right‘. Would this thinking then not translate into either another new WWII memorial dedicated to the Nazis, or in the name of financial probity combining yellow-bellied placation with another new war memorial? (Even the dullest of contemporary minds could recognise that it might not be tasteful to piggyback on the National Holocaust Memorial, but only someone on the ‘extreme right’ however might query whether a National Holocaust Memorial has any justification anywhere in the UK except in the Channel Islands – yes I know technically the Channel Islands aren’t classed as the UK).
I’ve learned more truths, and how to really think, since 2019 than I ever did in four years at university – the most earth-shattering being that fascism in all its manifestations isn’t actually extreme rightwing but instead is extreme leftwing, however the UK/USA didn’t want to upset uncle Joe Stalin by making a big thing of this at the time.
Surely everyone can see we already have enough war memorials, some listing the names of the local fallen, whilst others even more poignantly being dedicated to everyone who fought and died. (The Unknown Warrior’s Tomb and the Cenotaph come to mind, but sadly these were of course commandeered by London and not extensively replicated elsewhere in the UK?).
Here’s a bit of free consultancy advice for the powers that be (of all their sickly-slickly blending party hues):
Call a meeting at Number 10, invite a random selection of Rabbis, Imams, the odd Cardinal, Archbishop or even Bishop (but don’t offer any catering, otherwise you’ll be still taking orders at closing time) and ask them what they want. If ‘what they want, what they really, really, want’ has a new war memorial in the top ten, then do go ahead (money no object!) But please, for the rest of us hide within the decoration the words ‘taqiyya’ and ‘I told you so’.
Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.
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Will you sign????????????
Hi, I have just started a petition to scrap or reduce the number of Lords and I need 5 to sign it before it goes live.
Can you help? If so this is the link https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/658799/sponsors/new?token=HekvsLyHF7aVIfdv01xj
Lew B
We have ALL witnessed in recent times; a wholly unelected House of Lords thwart the will of the peoples elected chamber in the House of commons by voting against the governments Rwanda bill as set out in their manifesto.
This is not right and needs to be changed without delay.
There are 827 eligible peers, discounting sitting Judges bringing that total to 784. They receive £325 EACH DAY for simply signing their name at the door.
That daily pay is MORE than the state pension for people who have ACTUALLY, contributed tangible to our society, and this countries prosperity all their working life.
Put onto figures; – One person signing a name receives £1,625 A WEEK or£78,000 each year. I don’t suppose they even need to provide a pen.
784 peers X £325 = £254.800 each day or based on a 5-day week £1,274000. Or 48 weeks A year = £61,152000.
Can you feel the pinch of this recession?
Some of these people are there for winning a game of Cricket / Football or running / Swimming faster than others in the same race.
Some 26, YES TWENTY-SIX of the WOKEST people in our country are there simply because they were promoted to a Bishop.
Some are there to thank political allies in one way or another.
NINTY ONE of them are hereditary peers, that means they are there on the back of something an ancestor did perhaps 200 -500 years ago, they have contributed Sweet nothing to anything EVER!!!! Yet they can sit in judgement over the people and what the majority of the electorate want.
We NEED change! We MUST have change! and the purpose of this petition is to force that change the ONLY peaceful way available to us minnows who pay all the bills. Through exorbitant Taxes throughout our lives to keep these parasites in the life of luxury is via a petition which receives 100,000 signatures, that will trigger a debate in parliament, and I think our MP’s must vote on the outcome.
Starmer has openly stated that he would want to close it, but that was a gimmick to gain a vote, many of the house would like to see the Lords cut to size too.
The House of Lords is outdated and unfit for purpose. representing only the elite and privileged in our fractured society.
The time has come to have this remedied. because the House of Lords does not represent the people of this land.
Change is well overdue.
The Chancellor’s proposed arbitrary squandering of £1m of taxpayers’ hard-earned money is indeed a craven and obsequious sop to the more militant Islamist bloc steadily growing in numbers and influence in this Country. It also has an unexplained and indefensible HS2-style price tag. As others have said, the whole point of war memorials (eg the many Commonwealth War Commission graves) is that they are meant to be inclusive of all races and faiths, not partisan and sectarian, as this one seems destined to be.