POSTCARD FROM POLAND: 2020 – hate the game … now despising the year

There’s one good thing that’s come out of everything that’s happened this year, at least for me.

And that is that I am actually glad about my age and the fact that I won’t live long enough to witness the world sink much further into this hyper-idiotic quagmire of over-sensitivity that has been the hallmark of the year.

And I dread to think about what’s to come – we’re only half way through it.

I’ve pretty much said all I have to say about the media’s negativity, erroneous, slapdash and unprofessional reporting, over the Chinese Flu.

But now they’re at it again, with the race riots, smashing of statues and the re-writing of history so that what happened in the past won’t make millennials wet their beds any more.

And they can’t even get their facts right: the BBC recently published an article about England rugby player Ellis Genge, mistakenly accompanied by a picture of his team-mate, Lewis Ludlam. Well, they’re both of mixed-race (or do we call it dual heritage?) origin so I suppose that’s close enough for them.

Look … what happened to George Floyd was a crime against humanity, and the world has rightly taken notice. Maybe something will even be done about it.

For over a fortnight, protesters have been allowed to flout the social distancing and God knows how many other directives, to pack the streets – both in the US and the UK – in support of radical and swift redressing of racial injustice.

Fair enough.

But what’s not fair enough is the law breaking, violence and contempt for all manifestations of the establishment which has accompanied their protests.

If you follow me on Twitbook, you’ll know what I think about protestors – and I use that term loosely – who throw bikes at police horses and set off flares in their faces.

I’ll tell you what I think should happen to them. They should be rounded up, arrested and publically flogged.

And the same applies to anyone involved in pulling down or defacing monuments.

And in the US, things have been even worse. I quote from a report in the Chicago Tribune on June 6^th:

“On Monday, a 19-year-old father of two was captured running from a looted video game store on the city’s Southwest Side with a loaded .357 Magnum. He allegedly told police he was on his way to loot another store when he decided to hit up the GameStop and get some toys for his children.”

Seems like a perfectly reasonable defence. And what a considerate, devoted father he is.

Let’s return to the UK.

It was announced in today’s news that the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is to launch a commission to review the city’s landmarks to reflect diversity. “It will focus on representation among Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic communities, women, LGBTQ+ and disability groups,” a statement, reported by the CNN outlined, adding: “The review will include: murals, street art, street names and statues.”

Good God.

What will we be left with? I actually physically shudder to think.

My point is this: we cannot and should not attempt to re-write history because some of us are appalled by what was considered to be normal at the time.

I used to get six of the best from my housemaster about once a week at boarding school. And if he was too busy to do it, he would delegate the job to one of the prefects. It didn’t do me any harm. It probably didn’t make me adhere to school rules either, but I accepted it as part of the rounded education that my father was paying for. Nowadays, if you even criticise a child’s (sorry … a student’s) behaviour, you run the risk of having the parents threatening legal action. And while they are making up their minds, you’re put on gardening leave.

I’m not saying that corporal punishment is the way to go, but no one was tearing down statues about it in my day.

So let’s finish by having a bit of fun with this one, and come up with some more appropriate names for the parks and streets of what used to be called Great Britain.

How about Snowflake Close … or Sustainability Park? Maybe we could rename Trafalgar Square, because the name evokes Britain’s – sorry, England’s – quest for Imperialism. What about calling it LGBTQ+ Square, and remove the lions of course, because they remind us of captivity.

Then there’s the Tower of London. Think of everything that went on there … we don’t want to be reminded of that, do we? So let’s call it the Pansexuality Palace of London.

Let’s change Alma Place (Crimean War, 1984) to Vegan Place, Portobella Road (Panama 1739) to Climate Justice Road, and Mafeking Road (in Brighton – Boer Warm 1899) to Nonbinary Road.

And then’s there Waterloo Station. I mean what kind of message does that send our kids? Let’s call it Thomas The Tank Station, although obviously we can’t call the Fat Controller “fat” anymore, because that’s “fattist”, so how about Intersectionality Station?

Finally let’s go one step further and change the name of that old Christmas box favourite from Quality Street to Equality Street.

Sorted.

But as I said at the top, with any luck I’ll be brown bread long before the politically correct Gestapo rule us with their pink sequin wristbands.

But I’m not putting money on it.