Theatrical Cult

At this pantomime time, it is useful to look back at the happy-clappy street theatre worship that developed this year for a failing National Health Service.  ‘Saving’ the NHS has become a national obsession since the election of New Labour in 1997 if not before then, so it was hardly suprising that the political agenda should move on from ‘Saving’ to ‘Protecting’, with the Tories stealing Labour’s clothes and in doing so bringing the political left on board to support all the lockdown measures.  Left-wing journalist Neil Clark, who is director of the Campaign for Public Ownership, understands this.  The notion that any taxpayer-funded organisation, a vast amount of whose finance is spent on administrative bureaucracy, should need ‘Thanking’, let alone ‘Saving’ or ‘Protecting’ is absurd to say the least, though individual staff may well deserve thanking.

So this cult of NHS worship has been a useful tool to disguise the run down of patient care, including the closure of GP surgeries and the privatisation of some other services.   The symbolic adoption of the rainbow which had already acquired ‘woke’ status as used by the LGBTQWERTY cult was a useful addition to the propaganda.  It is the folly of millions of people on the political left that they fell for it.  They have been played, though they will never admit it, because for them the NHS is infallible; and because many of those on the left are of professional middle-class status employed within the public sector or academia, they were happy to promote the ‘Stay at Home’ message to ‘Protect’ the NHS, oblivious to the fact that millions of working people and thousands of business owners cannot do that, without losing their respective livelihoods completely, as has come to pass.

As the fifth largest employer in the world, hence the largest single employer in many areas of the UK, almost everyone of us knows someone who works for the NHS, which has helped its influence to become pervasive.  Whilst individual health should be a personal responsibility, many people rely on the NHS telling them what to do rather than using their own common sense, the most obvious being the acceptance of a face ‘covering’ that will constrict one’s breathing, for the sake of ‘public health’, in fear of the dreaded coronavirus.  Let’s overlook that almost everyone of us will contract at least one mild coronavirus every autumn or winter and our respective immune systems will serve us well in fighting it off.

The obese have self-inflicted reasons why they may have respiratory problems and at the risk of being insensitive perhaps advising these people to eat less and exercise more would be the helpful thing to do; whilst people who are frail and elderly are always at risk that any minor ailment could become more serious.  With the roll-out of the COVID19  ‘vaccine’, coincidentally on an elderly patient resident and at a hospital in the same city as the theatre pictured above, the NHS cult has been stepped up, ignoring that the prime beneficiary all along in this pantomime has been the pharmaceutical industry, with nine months of grooming by government on its behalf.

But by far the most absurd symbol this year of NHS worship has been from those businesses which have been forced to close for numerous weeks or at best to restrict the number of customers for reasons of ‘social distancing’ to ‘Protect’ the NHS,  then ‘Thanking’ it for the privilege of that loss of trade and with that, income and possibly jobs.   It is virtue signalling ‘woke’ insanity.  Stay sane.

Heritage Trust

Since the lockdown started eight months ago the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon has been closed and its staff placed on furlough, as they will be for another at least another four months.  So whilst they may each have enough money to live on, it is no substitute for a professional career that each of them has chosen; and live theatre can never be replaced by the virtual world, though no doubt the likes of Microsoft would like it to be.  More than that, the closure represents a loss of revenue for the town as it is one of the principal reasons for visiting the place, the local economy depending not just on overseas or domestic tourism, but on theatre and corporate hospitality, ‘away-days’ and the like, which help to keep the local hotels in business, I myself having attended such events.

These hotels have now been forced to close; when allowed to open they are required to impose the intrusive Track & Trace, now renamed Test & Trace, system on guests, for the sake of a mild respiratory virus that is harmless to the vast majority of the population.  Of course, there are some ‘virtual tourists’ who think that viewing somewhere on a smartphone or other device is a substitute for visiting it.  It isn’t and it never will be, though many in the ‘green’ lobby would like that as they don’t want us travelling anywhere more than a few miles from home for any reason, let alone for enjoyment, entertainment, or otherwise socialising with people outside our home ‘bubble’.  So unless we happen to live within a few miles, none of us should ever visit in person any of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust sites, which have now been forced to close, having previously had to restrict visitor numbers in any case for ‘social distancing’.

For me, Stratford is a little bit more than a few miles from home, though not that far away.  During the summer there is always a good buzz about the place, or there was up until this year; and whilst during the late Autumn one would expect it to be quiet during the middle of the day in the middle of the week, it is even quieter now that all the pubs have been forced to close.  As elsewhere in the country, shops that are deemed to be ‘non-essential’ have had restrictions on being allowed to open at all, notwithstanding that they will already have lost some trade due to the lack of visitors from outside the locality.

The result is a high proportion of empty retail units so that the town centre now has a depressing recessionary feel about it, although both the town and its surrounding dormitory commuter villages have a high proportion of well-salaried middle-class professional people now working from home, part of the introverted outlook that has resulted from the lockdown.  It is never good to experience a town dying, particularly one that is normally thriving and knowing that its economy is being deliberately killed off to force entertainment, retail, ‘hospitality’ and ‘tourism’ to go on-line.

It didn’t have to be this way and those in the mainstream media who have cheerled for the lockdown should face the consequences, but they won’t because their jobs are secure.  These people pretend that the well-being of the economy is totally unconnected to the well-being of the people who work within it or used to if they are now on furlough, possibly to become officially unemployed.  Contrary to what these media pundits may think or say, the economy cannot be turned on or off like a light switch.  Stratford, like numerous other places whose economy and reputation depend on continuing to attract a high number of visitors, will need to win them back.

Local MP and multi-millionaire businessman Nadhim Zahawi, like most of the Conservative Party and all of the Labour ‘opposition’, voted for the four-week ‘circuit breaker’ Tier 4 lockdown, which is due to end on Tuesday.  He is one of the founders and owners of the YouGov site which continues to peddle pro-lockdown propaganda on the basis of unverified ‘survey results’.  The result of that ‘circuit breaker’ four-week Tier 4 lockdown is that Stratford, like the rest of Warwickshire, like the rest of England, faces tougher restrictions than beforehand.  Whereas it was in Tier 1 four weeks ago, from Wednesday it will be in Tier 3, so the economic decline will continue.  Having toed the government line all along, local ‘green’ campaigner and former Conservative councillor Molly Giles has finally recognised the damage done to her home town, but it now feels too late.

All photographs taken by the author on 25th November.  There are more empty retail units that I photographed in the town centre on that day, but I think that eight is enough for one blog post.  Even a children’s hospice charity shop has been a victim of the lockdown measures.