Celebrities won’t Boss Brits about
JI’M STARTING to wonder if there’s something especially British about really, REALLY not liking being told what to do.
This week in America, veteran rocker Bruce Springsteen, below, is telling people what to do (and not for the first time – he told them to vote for Hillary Clinton a few years back). Now he’s popping up during TV ad breaks telling viewers: “There’s a chapel in Kansas standing on the exact centre of the lower 48. It never closes.All are welcome to come here and meet in the middle… it’s no secret the middle’s been a hard place to get to recently.”
And so on.The Boss, a preacher-man now? Nope. Turns out it’s a wordy, vaguely moralising advert for Jeeps. It first aired during the Super Bowl last weekend.
How would that sort of pitch play here in Blighty? IfVictoria
Wood were still with us, she’d know. “We’d go “tut”,” she’d say. And she’d be right – we would. We’re not much for celebrity endorsements or instructions here, especially wrapped up in turgid, bogus sanctimony like Bruce’s.We instinctively resist that kind of stuff, especially if it comes out of the mouths of celebs.
Those Downing Street Covid press conferences can be irritating, but if a minister or government scientist tells us we really should stay at home as much as we can, on the whole we accept their right to do so.
Not so, say,TV weather forecasters and newsreaders. They may be the epitome of modern celebrities – household names and in our living rooms every night – but some have surrendered to the sweet temptation of bossiness.
During the first lockdown last spring one above-himself weatherman routinely signed off forecasts with: “And remember – follow the rules.” Some newsreaders can’t just wish us goodnight: they have to add: “And stay at home.”
As I wrote the other week, this always makes me want to shout ‘No! YOU stay at home!’ and rebelliously run around outside for ten minutes.
America has a cult of celebrity: we don’t.We just tolerate them. And when celebs get above themselves and start telling us what to do – watch out.
We’re likely to do the exact opposite.
MY DAD died in 1977, suddenly, at just 49. Heart attack; no warning. He passed away in my mother’s arms. Theirs was a happy and devoted marriage. In time, mum, still a young woman, recovered from the terrible blow; re-married; moved away. But my sister still lives in the area and visits our father’s grave. And she reports something of a mystery about that grave. From time to time, my sister discovers emotive offerings have been left there. Once, a bunch of beautiful red roses (we all know what red roses signify, don’t we?) This Christmas, someone had draped some rather classy red decorations around the headstone. They were still there last week.
There’s never a card or note to say who the bearer of such affectionate tokens is (our mother died years ago). Did our father have a secret? Another woman? We are as certain not as we can be: dad was a homebird and spent every second of his time with his wife, when he wasn’t working at Ford’s main UK office down the road.
Did someone carry a torch for him? An unrequited love that still burns to this day? (Dad would be 92 now). I’d love to know your thoughts.
RSINCE launching this column with Judy back in 2001, I have, from time to time, used it to make a passionate plea for heavier jail terms for recidivist or ruthless criminals (or both). Killers, violent stalkers, rapists: there’s rarely a year goes by when a case of outrageously lenient sentencing doesn’t grab the headlines.
So today I write very much against type when I ask: 10 years? For lying about being in Portugal? Really?
Health Secretary Matt Hancock seems to be specialising in draconian controls on the UK population, courtesy of Covid. This week he said he “made no apologies” for announcing that holidaymakers who conceal they’ve been to a country on the coronavirus “red list” will face up to 10 years behind bars.This is condign punishment Cromwell would have recognised and approved of.
I’m not even sure if it’s legal. Supposing someone comes back from one of these places, lies about being there, gets found out, but tests negative for the virus? Not exactly a public threat on a par with armed robbery, or an act of espionage for a foreign power. Bank raiders and traitors often do less jug for their crimes.
Don’t misunderstand me.Anyone who goes on a holiday, or business trip, or family wedding, whatever, to one of these proscribed places and lies about it when they get back because they can’t be bothered to spend 10 days quarantining in a dreary airport hotel room – well, they deserve naming and shaming.
They probably deserve a fat fine too. But a year in jail for every day spent dodging quarantine? Where’s the proportionality?
In any case most of the variant viruses all this Judge Jeffreys stuff is meant to protect us from (such as the South African variant) are already here, aren’t they? They’ll spread efficiently enough without the help of quarantine dodgers. Our own Kent variant started as a handful of cases and now it’s the dominant form of UK Covid. It’s a bit late to start triple-bolting the stable door now.
Meanwhile, are you clear what the Government’s long-term war aims against Covid are? I’m not.
Matt Hancock was asked at
Monday’s No 10 press conference if British policy is to eliminate the virus, in the same way New Zealand has. Most virologists and epidemiologists would have replied: “No, of course not – we’re a major international hub parked on the continent’s doorstep.We’ll have to learn to live with a controlled, vaccined virus, like we do with flu.”
Instead, Hancock waffled on about everyone wanting to see the virus eradicated from the face of the planet, blah blah.
We’ve got to get real.We’ll be living with this blasted bug for decades. But the emphasis will be on LIVING with it, not dying from it.The new vaccines and their tweaked successors will see to that. There’s no need to seek a New Zealand solution, and anyway, geography means we can’t.
As for locking up quarantine dodgers for a decade… what next? Transportation?