According to certain sources close to my wife, I spend too much time in my man cave. In fact, these rumours may well be emanating from the great lady herself as I hear it repeatedly from our children, grandchildren and friends.
My man cave is my garden office, custom built to my own design when we moved house. It is a triumph of carpentry and construction. Fully insulated with a roof guaranteed to remain waterproof until I have no further need of one and air-conditioned. It has Wi-Fi, multiple power points and is lined with bookshelves. What more could an elderly man want?
It is from this vantage point that I alternately survey the world, as it is presented to me online, fume over the state of it and then write something about it. And there’s so much to fume about. In no particular order:
Where’s my flag?
You probably have not heard of anvexillia. That is because I just made it up. But anvexillia undoubtedly lies at the root of why men like me, men of a certain age and a certain persuasion are mostly miserable.
The word comes from vexillium, the Latin word for flag. And it was as I was sitting in my office, fuming over one thing and another, that I realised: people like me don’t have a flag. Everyone else has one or has their place on one. If you’re gay, you’re sorted. If you’re black you get a black stripe, brown if you are not quite black enough and if you are a transgender, queer and canine attracted supporter of Hamas there is probably a dot or a blemish that represents you on some flag or other.
But for us elderly, white, heterosexual, house-owning Volvo drivers, not a flag in sight. The TNC competition to design one begins now. Use of generative AI must be declared.
What is going on in Kemi Badenoch’s head?
I was quite keen to see Kemi elected leader of the Conservative Party. She spoke well in interviews and was quite combative on her feet. While I know we are supposed to notice neither that she is female nor black, she is female and black. I couldn’t help noticing that she was female and black and how that would truly be one in the eye for the Labour Party which has yet to find even a suitable white female to lead it, despite its female only shortlists. Keir Starmer seems confused about what a woman is but that is not quite the same thing.
Kemi has been slightly disappointing since taking office. She does not quite seem to be able to land any knock-out punches on Sir Keir at the dispatch box and has the unfortunate ability to make him look good, witty even. She is over-sensitive and has the brass neck to refer to what the Tories did while they were on office, without mentioning that they ruined the country.
Her latest pronouncement, following on the heels of Reform UK’s first female MP who said that they should bring in legislation to ban the burqa, was a tone deaf misstep if ever there was one. In saying that she does not think we should ban the burqa, has she no idea what a vote magnet it would be to ban it?
The population is becoming tired of the increasing number of hijabs on display, but furious at the sight of women fully covered from head to toe with either a burqa or a niqab hiding their face. It is an insult and an affront to our way of life. Kemi reckons it would be hard to enforce. No, it wouldn’t. If an officer of the law spots someone in a burqa, then they tell her (or him) to take it off.
Enforcing it would be easy, if the police had the will. But, given how readily they collar folk for preaching the Christian gospel in a Christian country because someone nearby in a burqa is offended, I am not filled with hope that they would enforce it. Which brings me to the police.
What is wrong with the police?
The streets of my city, from the town centre to the outskirts, are dominated by speeding e-scooters and e-bikes. Correction: it is the pavements that are dominated by these abominations. Invariably the bikes, with huge tyres and heavy frames, are being ridden by a young man of colour with a bandana pulled over his face and a Deliveroo box on his back.
The bikes have clearly had whatever speed regulators they have fitted bypassed as they, in turn, bypass all the traffic on the road. They are travelling at nearly 40mph in 30mph zones, the riders do not wear helmets and they do all this within sight of passing police cars, with impunity. I am astonished that there have been so few casualties of pedestrians in the UK involving these death traps, but overall statistics matter not if it is you or a family member who is killed.
As far as I can see, the police are making absolutely no effort to stop these illegal e-bikes or e-scooters. How hard can it be? Instead, they pull in by the thousand, law-abiding, road tax paying citizens who exceed the speed limit on some deserted road in the countryside. Why? Because it is easy.
Drivers have registration numbers and all it takes is a daily check of the speed camera feeds to see who has been naughty and who has been nice. No face-to-face interaction necessary, an automatic letter with a £100 fine is issued – or you can pay the same for a speed awareness course to avoid points. As you might have guessed, yours truly has recently attended such a course.
So here I remain, banished to the man cave, armed with Wi-Fi, righteous indignation, and the humbling memory of my recent speed awareness course. I may not have a flag—yet—but give it time. Once I figure out how to get AI to design one featuring beige tones, a Volvo estate, and a Deliveroo operative with an e-bike wrapped round him, we’ll be ready. Not so much marching but shuffling purposefully to the garden gate to put the recycling bins out – don’t get me started on those.
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He is a columnist with Unity News Network and 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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Whilst I am not a Tory (UKIP actually), I think Kemi is quite good. She has just been dealt a terrible hand, a 14 year legacy and a gang of wets. The Tories are toast, she is overseeing the funeral rites.
As one who liked a bit of speed on proper two wheeled machines with decent ICEs I view the recent trend for virtue signalling self righteous overgrown Scalextric vehicles, two and four wheeled, as an abomination.
Anybody who avails themselves of the accursed machines can be adequately described, in the words of the great natural philosopher J W Pepper, as “a walking talking contravention of all the known laws of nature”.
Might have been someone else who uttered that truism but it could have been J W P; I don’t think it was J P S. J P S was too busy organising his Formula One GP team and indulging his weird penchant for chain smoking Balkan Sobranie Black Russian fags, declaring that he was trapped by his freedom and just wanted to be understood.
I would like to be understood, especially by HMRC, and I want to know is if there is a safe man cave manoeuvre that will give me total enlightenment and whether the use of a Javanese person beating stick would be of utility.
Must get out more. If only I could find my burqa, I have a bank to rob.