12 Comments

I am sure your speech was not that bad if you have the self awareness to recognise it could have been better.

Your talk of road building hit home with me as I am surrounded by builders destroying the countryside around my home for a new "ring road" that won't even be a complete circle, so will probably not get used by lorries. It will be used though as an excuse to fill in the remaining fields with rabbit hutch houses.

Nobody can stop it (legally) now Sir Keir Stalin has taken office. I was only just thinking of going out and lying in front of a digger but I fear I would be on my own and turned into compost within a blink of an all seeing eye.

Expand full comment

The whole trans debacle is also related to collapse anxiety, and plays into technocratic and transhumanist agendas.

Expand full comment

Transhumanism is the ultimate attempt to escape imminent death, as we spoke about in our first podcast. Perhaps the 'memento mori' symbol could be retooled against the WEF? Unless people confused it with some histrionic XR malarkey - I remember one XR protest in Canterbury that featured a mock funeral procession...

Expand full comment

Yeah, I think any memento mori skull symbolism would inevitably get bogged down in the XR agenda, sadly. However, I do love the idea of countering transhumanist fantasy with frail yet beautiful human mortality.

Expand full comment

And where are they now? The little people of STONHENGE!.. My mate Kathryn thinks stonehenge itself is a psy-op! I dig her skepticism

Expand full comment

"I do not think the problem was that the band was down, I think the problem was that there was a ston'enge monument that was in danger of being crushed by a dwarf"

Expand full comment

"It's not your job to be as confused as Nigel"

Expand full comment

"When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty." ('A Vision of the Last Judgement' (1810) in 'MS Note-Book' p. 95, William Blake. I don't get Neoliberal Feudalism's 'skinsuiting' - Maybe they are also 'skin walkers' (yee naaldlooshii)? I googled Air Strip One -it has been 60 years since I read 1984! As for Frieda Kahlo's paintings being revered by XReb/Just Stop It (Silly!), are not they far too conventional - they actually mean what they say they mean, and use traditiional Naive/Primitivist Art technique (eg Le Douanier Rousseau, Alfred Wallis LS Lowry....). As a proto-TERF, surely she would be abhorrent to the Monstrous Regiment of Modern Skin-walkers, a target ripe for smearing?

Expand full comment

Maybe Just Stop Oil will burn harry potter books next...?

Expand full comment

I admire your attempt at self-deprecation, but as someone who was present in the audience here in Porto I didn't find much to complain about at all. I think the problem was the nature of the audience itself, in many respects. I'm not trying to insult people for being incapable of knowing a good speech when they hear one, of course, but suggesting that (a) many of those in attendance only had English as a second language and possibly failed to catch some of the sarcasm, and (b) the fact that we didn't have a full house meant that your satire - which I enjoyed tremendously - didn't meet with the louder reception one might find elsewhere. I think that gave you the impression that your talk was unsuccessful, and it wasn't.

Expand full comment

Thanks, Troy - nice to hear your thoughts and glad you enjoyed the talk. I think I was trying to steer a somewhat fine line between total spontaneity and thorough preparedness, and perhaps would have been better off choosing one or the other. Still, good to know some of it landed!

Expand full comment

Thanks Munchy. Sorry to hear of the road building in your area. No doubt the local 'net-zero' crew will have their fingers in that pie.

Expand full comment