The man cave is both real and virtual; it is a building in my garden, but it is also a state of mind. Thus, today, I find myself in the virtual man cave once again. I am on a train to London, one that passes through Doncaster.
We have just had the copious ‘safety notices’ about leaving luggage in the gangways, and which notices to read to find out what to do ‘in an emergency’. Not a dicky bird about what to do if one of our increasing numbers of cultural enrichment representatives gets on the train wielding a machete, inviting us to play a seasonal game of ‘do you want to die?’.
My train stops at Peterborough on the way to London which was where the chap referred to in my recent column got on. I comfort myself with the thought that, surely, these people don’t kill anyone in First Class? After all, we have our afternoon tea and sandwiches to get through. It would add insult to bloodshed to start hacking at folk up here.
On the other hand, I also worry that they may be members of the Green Party who want to kill anyone who sits in First Class. But we have a number to phone in case we ‘see anything suspicious’, after which the powers that be will come and ‘sort it’ – presumably after we have ‘seen it and said it’.
I can see that working: “Er, excuse me, is that British Transport Police – yes, the fat ones who could not get into the real police – well, there’s a man hovering over me with a large blade – yes, it’s one of those pointy ones – and I think it looks suspicious. Can I describe him? Well, he’s male and about 5 feet and 6 inches – no, I don’t know what that is in decimals. Any other features? Well, he is wearing a hoodie and some rather large trainers. Oh, and he’s black. Sorry officer, I didn’t realise you were black too, but you did ask. OK, good, you’ll take a note of this, and I should be hearing about my non-crime hate incident in a few days. Very good.”
One of the ‘something must be done’ brigade has said we may well need airport style security at railway stations. Well, Mr Something Must Be Done, how about getting some police back on the street, enforcing drug laws (we can be 100% certain that the chap on the train last week had sampled the wacky baccy at some point in the evening), and arresting people with knives, regardless of the colour of their skin?
Home is where the tax is
Those thieving bastards at Westminster plan to impoverish hard-working people even further. Richard the Turd lookalike, Rachel Reeves, plans a ‘mansion tax’. Who else but a bunch of socialists – which includes most of the Conservative Party – would aim to punish people through taxation for what they have already bought and paid for, having worked hard to do so and having been taxed up to the testicles (women can have testicles too) for decades?
I think my wife and I will escape this one, because house prices in our hometown of Hull are amongst the cheapest in the country. If we owned the same house in Edinburgh, we would be well within Reeves’s mansion tax bracket. If we owned our house in London, we would not be able to afford to eat. And in a supreme act of cynicism, having told us all to get e-cars, they are planning to tax them per mile because, clearly, they are not generating enough revenue ‘at the pumps’ – because they don’t need to use said pumps. Like we did not see that one coming. We will stick to our diesel guzzling SUV thank you very much Mrs Reeves.
Why am I going to London, you ask. Well, thanks for asking. Me, being a jolly important kind of chap, I have been invited by Cathay Pacific – my chosen airline – to an evening of champagne and Michelin Star Cantonese cooking at The Peninsula Hotel in London. Sadly, they are not offering accommodation (circa £1000 a night). I’ve been a top tier flier with Cathay for as long as I can remember and, after a prolonged period of hardship (aka the Great Covid Con), they are beginning to look after their extremely frequent fliers in the style to which we had become accustomed. Long may it last, as my response to this kind of thing is the overwhelming desire to increase my carbon footprint. You know it makes sense.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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Re. rumoured Mansion Tax – what happens if you live in an inherited mansion, have no money and spend what money you do have coming in on food, heat and top band council tax? For that matter too, what happens if council tax is more than income?
Roger Watson is definitely a very, most, totally, amazingly, talented writer. His articles combine serious and pertinent commentary on current affairs with his personal hilarious observations. The “phone conversation” with British Transport Police is a case in point – priceless stuff!
As for the issues addressed in the article – they provide yet another moment to reflect on the insanity of the state of the UK: the illegal migrants being welcomed into the UK, for example, and the increasingly frightening rise of violence on our streets, with no sign of any change any time soon.
For those of us who recently watched the Daily Express interview with Liz Truss (I saw it on YouTube), explaining that it is really the civil servants who run the country (as we know: I would add “and their paymasters higher up”) with the MPs at every level really helpless to make any meaningful policy changes, it is time, surely, for us to just settle down and let the future unfold. It’s already unfolded, among other places, in New York and Birmingham – Islamists are running the show now – so, accepting that there is no point in voting for anyone, maybe we should just, as I say, settle down and allow the future to unfold.
Thanks again, though, to Roger Watson for lightening the load a bit – his humour actually brings home the madness around us, without making us feel that we ought to jump off the nearest bridge. On the contrary, Roger’s entertaining, but not depressing, coverage of the craziness around us is a reminder that this, too, shall pass…
I meant to say that – to my horror – yesterday I saw a headline in The National, Scottish SNP/pro-Independence newspaper (using the term loosely) in which they welcomed the election of the new Muslim/Jew hating Mayor of New York. The headline over a report inside the paper (I was reading over the shoulder of a passenger in front of me) read to the effect that the election of this man “May Yet Give Us Hope” – that’s the gist of it, astonishingly. He is so bad that Donald Trump said he would prefer a Democrat to win, rather than this dangerous man but the msm are reporting criticisms as – guess what? Islamophobic rhetoric. What a surprise. One of the most telling commentators, however, points out that this is mass migration working as it was intended. Game, set and match.