It is now safe to put the TV on again. Glastonbury is over. What passes for music now seems to be either a couple of black guys with their shirts off exhorting people to “kill the IDF” or some Irish arseholes* in balaclavas saying much the same thing. Too bad if you don’t agree.
Music, when it was provided, seemed to be the preserve of a brigade of geriatrics.** I’m sure I saw Rod Stewart inside the body of someone who looked like they were on day release from a nursing home dancing with an old Scottish lady purporting to be Lulu. I love them both, but can we not give them a rest? I imagine the backstage riders are no longer crates of Bollinger and Smarties with all the red ones removed. Probably more like incontinence pads and a comfortable armchair.
And just what was that bloated apparition posing as Neil Young? One of his signature songs used to be ‘Old Man’. Not sure if he still sings that one. But in an act of overwhelming generosity he decided ‘at the last minute’ to do a U-turn (very popular these days) and allow the BBC to broadcast his set. What a guy – eh? Woke virtue-signalling is certainly not the preserve of the young. One imagines that a generous helping of spondoolies was involved.
Manchester Art Gallery
I have written about this in more detail elsewhere but Manchester Art Gallery has become less about art and more about virtue-signalling. I don’t know when this happened, but sometime in the past two years when I last visited. With time to kill last week I popped in for a look, and it doesn’t take long to realise that something is wrong.
The Grand Tour, beloved by the sons of 19th Century aristocrats, is presented as the origin of modern tourism which, by an intellectual leap of Olympic proportions, led to colonialism. A bit rich given that the Grand Tour took in Greece and Italy, the latter being the original colonisers and both of which have profoundly influenced thought, language and political systems across the world.
The plaques beside the paintings tell you little about the paintings or the artists, but plenty about what a nasty bunch of blighters the British were and how they subjugated the world, taking all and leaving nothing of value behind. Some sections are given over to people whose names suggest they are not ethnically British to display alternative pictures and to regale British visitors further about how bad they are.
Thus, we are responsible for climate change, eroticised attitudes towards women and mass immigration. One caption suggests that had we not ruined Nigeria then so many of them would not have to come here. I can think of other reasons why Nigerians may want to come here. Their country is poorly managed, corrupt and riven by interreligious strife; just like ours, but on a larger and more lethal scale.
At no point are the gifts of democracy, education, law and abolition of slavery mentioned. Hardly an exhibit is untainted by the inane simplistic observations of some half-wit who knows nothing about art, but everything about victimhood. These people, some of whom are probably immigrants or the descendants of immigrants, seem to hate us and to want us to hate ourselves. I once ended up working in a country I hated and solved that problem by leaving and going back to my own. Is that too much to ask?
Tears of a clown
Our blubbering chancellor’s outburst of lachrymosity, broadcast to millions, while her boss told the world what a great job she was doing was, apparently, for “personal reasons”. Yes dear, you are personally responsible for driving our economy into the ground, overspending on all the wrong things, alienating pensioners and farmers, and pricing the weekly shopping almost out of reach of some families. Keir Starmer has since announced that she will likely be in the job for many years and she that she is totally “up’ for the job. I imagine she’ll be gone within a few days. Overantout!
*I can say that as I am one (Irish, that is)
**I am also one of 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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I’m also Irish. Yes, we also produce arseholes. Many of them are in the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament for your English readers).
I would be bored at a steam reaction engine rally (but hope those who enjoy such things have a good time) – however MSM don’t cram steam engine rallies down the throats of the public, they don’t go into raptures about the exhibits, the attendees, the catering, the outfits, the weather. How I wish Glastonbury and, dare I say it, Wimbledon were too treated as being only of interest to those who bother to attend – or if they absolutely must a single factual report.
As for ‘Art’, these days it’s best to only look at the exhibits themselves and ignore the labels altogether, although some special exhibitions are helpfully named in ways that assist a boycott and others so blatantly crude propaganda that it’s easy to turn around and exit straight away.