the brilliantly leaping gazelle

Alright, we get it, about how in the world of perpetual criticism and finding fault that masquerades as journalism over at ‘The Guardian’. That whilst it can be trying to find new ways to pandering to its disciples need to feel guilty to just for being alive, in their world, The Garrick Club is something vexing. Their interminable pursuit of this men only members club has been a staple of its output for well over a week now, so much so that it has reached beyond the confines of “The Guardians’ sanctimonious morality, and causes four judges to resign their membership of it today.

If ‘The Guardian’ were a dog, one would think it had rabies it’s been frothing so angrily about it. But the thing about it is, is it really that important a story? How is the fact that a group of successful men like to socialise in comfortable surroundings with other successful men and have formed a club that only allows successful men to join it a story? Especially since they’ve been at it since 1831.

But in the echo-chamber that is ‘The Guardian’s’ editorial stance, one which ruthlessly assumes some evil machinations lurking hidden somewhere such a privileged club, being a member of such a club is suspicious and that suspicion is enough to permit a kind of guilt by association that’d make Senator Joe McCarthy blush.

It’s as if no-one at ‘The Guardian’ would ever dream of using social connections to help bolster theirs, their friends or associates careers, or to use those connections to some other advantage. It happens everywhere, from rugby clubs and Chambers of Commerce to the Women’s Institute. To imagine it wasn’t ever thus is being dangerously disingenuous. If Kath Viner, the editor of ‘The Guardian’ was serious about highlighting the pernicious dangers inherent in of cronyism, of friends doing friends favours and keeping those favours quiet, then possibly being open and transparent about her relationship and subsequent marriage to Guardian copy whore Adrian Chiles might be a good place to start. He claims the relationship started after he started working there in 2019, ending in marriage in 2022.

Isn’t this exactly the sort of behaviour that ‘The Guardian’ would be quick to condemn? Someone in a position of power, not only having a relationship with a subordinate but also powerful enough to terminate their employment? Just because here there is a reversal of the sexes of the people involved that usually accompanies these stories, doesn’t make it any the less problematic. They’re ever so quick to call on someone to resign over something that offends their own highly selective moral sensibilities, just as long as it doesn’t happen to involve their editor, it seems.

And also what, essentially, is the difference between The Garrick Club and Warner Hotels. One is men only club whilst the other provides other adults only holidays. Can someone explain why one kind of discrimination is so much worse than another? Or is age discrimination alright, just as long as its done to those too young to notice their being discriminated against?

(Not sure whats’s happening. The second email version of this post was meant to correct the formatting errors of the first one. It didn’t. But being stubborn I’m giving a final go. Apologies for adding more guff to your spam folder)

Much the same as most peoples, my reaction to the news that Middling has cancer was sa adness that a mother with young children was so afflicted, quickly tempered by the realisation that any sympathy was misplaced. Her being married into the family of the biggest benefit fraudsters in the country, means that the  state will pay for all her treatments and do so willingly, not even questioning her right to such entitlement. The press, knowing their role and performing it with an eye on future rewards of honours and titles, will act as cheerleaders for it being our patriotic duty to think this, that it’s almost our privilege to pay for the sort of medical care others can only dream of.

Writing about dreaming puts me in mind of one I had early this morning, when I was considering who were properly deserving of our sympathy amid this ridiculous confection of concern. I thought of  Billy Wilder and Ken Loach and if neither of those names mean anything to you, then you have no reason to be reading this blog. In a nutshell, one of them is probably one of the best film directors ever, and the other been the social conscience of British cinema since 1965.. Specifically, I imagined what manner of delights would they conjure up out of all the supposed grief and other phony emotions that have allegedly consumed vast swathes of the population this weekend.

Billy Wilders deeply cynical ‘Ace in The Hole’ tells the story of an out of work reporter who stumbles upon a small story but inflates it until it becomes massive sensation, with him directing the narrative. It’s a biting examination of the seedy relationship between the press, the news it reports and the manner in which it reports it. The film also shows how a gullible public can be manipulated by the press. Sounding familiar?

What would he have made of the circumstances whereby a conspiracy theory involving a famous person is created by and shared on social media and then that conspiracy theory is reported on and discussed by the press in a perpetual orgy of speculation and rumour.. Until the famous person is put in a situation where they are forced to reveal an even bigger story about themselves. The press and social media are delighted by this, as the newer, bigger story is so much better. Social media then turns on itself, needing as always, someone to be critical of, this time it is the people who spread the conspiracy theory The press reports on this, in a manner suggesting that they are merely curious observers of this digital onanism, free from any blame. And should they then turn on each other, so much the better, as they can report on that.

Then there is the emotional inflation, whereby a normal expression of sympathy from an estranged relation is imbued with such import and earning so much admiration that you’d think the relation had done something worthy enough to win the Nobel Peace Prize. The various opinion pieces in the press that are all variations of the same opinion. One has to admire the  genius of their benefit scam alchemy, where cutting ribbons, visiting factories or hospitals, and shaking hands is somehow transformed into work.

Billy’d have so much fun with all that, and being old school Hollywood, would do it less than two hours.

Ken Loach, always keen to tell the stories of Britain’s neglected and downtrodden, worlds away from wizards and superheroes, would unfavourably compare the gushing tributes toadied about Middlings ‘bravery’ with that of real bravery in the face of a similar diagnosis. A single father, maybe living on a sink estate, working two minimum wage jobs to support her and her young daughter. The only drugs he can get hold of is heroin from hus pimp because the waiting list for NHS cancer treatment is so long. So long, that it became terminal before she got an appointment. He doesn’t do froth, our Ken.

 Being Ken, he’d also include references to Middlings husbands family habit of going to hospital for a two night precautionary stay if they felt unwell, about how it wasn’t condemned as a flagrant mockery of the society upon which they sponged off by the press, but instead sold to a credulous public as a right and proper thing to do. And while he was at it, allude to the plights of the thousand other men who were diagnosed with cancer on the same day as Wayne, king of the spongers. You know, those men unlucky enough to be born to the wrong parents.

I care about her about as much as she cares about me, possibly because she hasn’t earned other feelings from me due to the fact that she’s had no positive effect on my life. Now if Neil Tennant or Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys had cancer, that’d be another story, because they provided the soundtrack to my youth. When the their album ‘Introspective’ came out, I took the day off college to immerse myself in and it was a good job that I did, because I fondly remember spending hours listening to the opening track, ‘Left To My. Own Devices’. The utter lush majesty of it was so unlike anything I’d ever heard. Epic sonic indulgence in eight minutes.

As things change, so they remain the same and so just as Galileo was found guilty of heresy in 16th Century Italy, so too has the BBC’s Justin Webb been found guilty of expressing the modern equivalent of a heretical belief in 21st Century Britain.

Galileo’s accusers were the Roman Catholic Church and his his supposed heresy, expressed in his book ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World System’ was his belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not vice-versa,. This view was gaining some traction in 16th Century Europe, and because of that the Catholic Church in the form of the Inquisition sought to punish him. He was found guilty of heresy, forced to renounce the truth, sentenced to life imprisonment – commuted to house arrest until his death – and the publication of any of his books, including any future works, was banned.

Who accused Justin Webb isn’t know but his heresy was that, whilst co-presenting BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, he uttered the phrase “trans women – that is males’ last year when discussing new International Chess Federation guidelines regarding whether being biologically male can give players an advantage in the game.

Leaving aside the question of exactly how biological males competing in a women’s category are somehow conferred an advantage when playing chess – chess – isn’t clear. Proper sport – the kind that causes you to sweat and muscles to ache if you do too much – I understand the advantage. Any male who has gone through puberty has all manner of biological advantages because of it and no amount of ideologically driven scientific gerrymandering will alter that fact.

But nonetheless, someone complained that the comment amounted to Webb giving his personal view on a controversial matter in breach of the BBC’s requirements on impartiality, and the the BBC’s editorial complaints unit agreed, saying it “gave the impression of endorsing one viewpoint in a highly controversial areaHow exactly is this ‘a highly controversial issue’? It isn’t. Far from it, as polls have consistently shown that the overwhelming majority of Britons hold same the view, namely that trans-women are in fact men. When they properly understand what is meant by a trans-woman, that is.

To me, this is just another baleful, yet increasingly modern example of a ‘sport’ or organisation wishing to jump aboard the trans bandwagon and in the interests promoting this and championing that, essentially negating the rights of biological women. And of an organisation that has abandoned all moral authority in trying to placate the digital mob.

The frightening thing is that Galileo had to wait a couple of centuries to be proved right.

We already know Justin Webb is right.