I told you my OCD was ebbing with age! I know, I’ve let my reader down, whether he be in Aberdour, Azerbaijan or Argentina, it’s just not good enough. Whether an irritant or a substitute for Calm – that’s the name of a sleep app for anyone unfamiliar – there is, I admit, an increasing unpredictability about my posts and their posting. Why? I’ve, actually, been writing my forthcoming bestseller, inevitable future Netflix hit now that they have seen the light and dumped Pearl. How could they? I mean, God forbid the Mega Duchess has to downsize to fifteen bathrooms!
As interest rates, now, rocket and the astronomical energy bills are crippling – possibly even life-threatening for some such as Elsie (77) whose predicament Susanna Reid spoke of in her exclusive interview with the Prime Minister on Good Morning, Britain on Tuesday – it is reported that BP’s profits have more than doubled to £5bn in the first three months of this year, only trounced by those of Shell whose quarterly profits have reached £7bn thanks to the soaring oil and gas prices. Long sentence? A lot to assimilate, the reality that the world is governed by – and in the ruthless control of – oil giants such as Shell and BP and Big Pharma. As they acquire billions at our expense, they have everyday life covered. Ours. In fact, in the hands of Big Pharma, life and death covered, let’s face it! No further proof needed that money is the root of all evil but the genie is out of the bottle on that front and the runaway exposé is hard to swallow.
On a trivial – though related note – I woke this morning to the sound of Vernon Kay rather than, once again, Zoe Ball. My point? Zoe Ball is on a salary of £980,000. Has she re-negotiated part-time? To be fair, I have just read that she was, previously, earning £1.36m but offered to take a pay cut last year as she felt it inappropriate to earn that amount during a pandemic … Now, I like Zoe Ball and am not surprised at this but quite right. What kind of mad world is this in which chatting into a microphone five mornings a week commands such an absurd amount of money? For the record, Steve Wright, apparently, earns £465,000 but, then, he is Sunday Love Songs! Scott Mills, he whom I just ‘adore’? Well, he’s in the poverty bracket at a mere £375,000.
A mad world. An increasingly ‘woke’ world, so much so that Phillip Schofield, mid-interview this morning on This Morning, was heard to say ‘French women – or people who identify as women’! Sorry? Has it come to this? One, now, has to qualify the word ‘women’? NO! Absolutely not, Phillip ‘woke’ Schofield. The majority will not be dictated to by the minority. The ‘woke’ do not ‘Run the World‘. Beyoncé does!
She might as well do, actually. For, embarrassingly – no, worse, shockingly – a recent survey whose catchment was 2,000 Brits aged 18-30 discovered that the majority know … nothing! Well, they have no concept of history or who shaped their world. Nelson Mandela was in the top thirty most forgotten but 51% had no idea who Anne Frank was! Utterly shameful but, sadly, entirely believable. Neil Armstrong? The first man to walk on the moon in 1969? In terms of history, most definitely up there, one would agree. Tell that to the 53% who had never heard of him! That not only points the finger at a failing education system but, moreover, at the parents responsible for these ignoramuses. In truth, if somebody told me History had been replaced on the school curriculum by Gender Studies, I would not be surprised.
Meanwhile, 74% are ignorant as to the charms of the ultimate gentleman, Cary Grant. What a loss. Mind you, most wouldn’t have a clue what a gentleman is: ‘A chivalrous, courteous or honourable man’. On second thoughts, how could they? That particular breed is extinct.
Of note is the percentage of our ‘promising’ youngsters who had never heard of Marilyn Monroe – 49%. Even the hideous image of Kim Kardashian – famous for being famous – shovelled into the icon’s most infamous dress and tottering up the red carpet at the recent Met Gala in New York, could do nothing to incite a dormant intellect – or find one! The sound of alarm bells is deafening. To think we incarcerate wild animals for our entertainment? Intelligent, sentient creatures. We have got it so wrong.
Often, there is humour where one least expects and I am so grateful that I bore witness to the funniest comment on Tuesday past. Good Morning, Britain had the big scoop, as I mentioned earlier: Susanna Reid’s interview with the Prime Minister at Number 10. Utterly cringeworthy as Boris attempted to dodge the artillery of bullets but the final seconds were gold dust!
Susanna: ‘Prime Minister, it’s good to talk to you. Lorraine is waiting to take up all the issues that
you have brought up in this interview.
Boris: ‘Who’s Lorraine?’.
Thank you. Just, thank you!
Finally, I must re-visit Piers Morgan, Uncensored courtesy of TalkTV. Recording it, nightly, I decided to take another look, previously unimpressed by his ‘attack’ on President Trump. Thinking I would skim through them, instead, I was gripped – and found myself agreeing with everything he said. We do think alike, after all? Absolutely. He deplores ‘woke’ and the Cancel Culture and he fells both with wit and intellect. Take a look – Channel 237, 8pm. He discusses what are called ‘Brain Dumps’ at the start, nightly, as he mocks the embarrassing and non-sensical. Thus, his summary on Kim Kardashian wearing Marilyn’s dress? ‘This disgusting desecration of one of the most famous and classiest items of clothing in Hollywood history’. Quite.
Then, there is the question of ‘What is a woman?’ Piers referred to said question as the ‘treacherous puzzler that’s frazzling even the world’s biggest brains!’. How he managed to follow that using The White Stiletto as an example is, admittedly, beyond me but … He described how, when asked by The Times to define a woman, Nicola Sturgeon said, ‘I’m not going to. I’m not going to get into this debate at a level that’s about simplified and lurid headlines. Trans people are amongst, possibly, the most stigmatised and discriminated against minorities in our society.’
Sorry?! Once again, Piers spoke for me: ‘It’s not a debate. It’s, literally, a word that has a very simple meaning. Nothing to do with trans’ rights. Check any dictionary in the world and a woman is defined as ‘an adult human female’! When you don’t answer it like that, you do women and women’s rights such a massive dis-service. On a day when American women are on the verge of losing the right to decide what to, legally, do with their bodies, that definition has never been more vital or important.’
Amen to that. I think I might just re-follow him on Insta! Piers Morgan is making sense – or, is he? I couldn’t fail to notice the massive irony. He is all guns blazing with regard to the abortion situation in America: the leaked draft suggesting the Supreme Court are about to overturn the 1973 blanket ruling – Roe v Wade – which legalised the procedure, adamant that it is a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body. Again? Piers believes that one has the right to choose when it comes to one’s own body … Superb. So, it follows, then, that one should have the right to choose whether or not one agrees to the injection of an experimental vaccination into one’s body but … he was vitriolic and very verbal in his contempt for those who refused. At least be consistent! Surely, he, himself, recognises the glaring irony? (I think I may send this to him.) Predictably, I surmise that he would justify his stance with the argument that complying with the experimental vaccination was to protect others. Perhaps but, at the end of the day, the point is – and he believes this – one’s body is sacrosanct. Nobody has ‘the right to decide what to, legally, do’ with someone else’s body. He said it himself.
Fickle. Inconsistent. Power-driven. Incredibly short-sighted … No, not Piers Morgan, the world! As Cambridge University declares that a robot chef, designed by its researchers, has been trained to taste the saltiness of a dish in its making, one cannot help but ponder the intelligence of a race who, in its desperation to encourage both inertia and increasing obesity, is, also, hellbent on rendering itself obsolete! One can take it as red that the under 30s have never heard of Frankenstein and his monster, either … Big mistake. Huge!
‘They say Indians used to press their ears to the earth to hear what was coming next but, if you were to lie down and listen to this ground, you’d get run over.’
Alexandra Fuller, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant.
This is Trish, signing off.
