THE CITY GRUMP

Be not afraid, one of the 3 is definitely not the Montecito Moaners. They are but autumn leaves, soon to be blown away into the compost of history. We can rest easy.

In no particular order, as they say on Strictly, the first is the sinister David Halpern (now a CBE to boot) who, almost unnoticed during man-child Harry’s media antics, made a deeply concerning confession during an interview last week. You will probably remember he is the brains behind the Nudge Units that have sprung up in Whitehall and had a field day during the pandemic, especially when it came to nudging us all to conform to mask wearing, starting with the then Prime Minister, Boris.

Halpern said, “He turned his subliminal powers of persuasion on the prime minister himself after it became apparent he was not leading by example. We did share with him a slide pack at one point. It had a series of images of pretty much every single world leader wearing a mask, and then a picture with him not,” he recalls. This nudge was used to point out that “a normal thing for a world leader to do right now is wear a mask”. Halpern went on to contrast the widespread use of facemasks in south east Asian countries with their widespread rejection in the West, noting they are “tighter” societies characterised by a more “collectivist” culture than our own. He then adds that he believes the behavioural “scaffolding” can still be put in place to encourage mask wearing in Britain: 

“You try and create some cases which remind people. Eventually, as it starts to become a habit, it becomes more automatic, then you can take the scaffolding away”.

Coincidentally, here are some quotes from Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propagandist mastermind:

“It is the absolute right of the State to supervise the formation of public opinion”

“Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated are confident they are acting on their own free will”

“This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it”

I submit, if Britain isn’t to sink into the ways of a Dictatorship, the likes of Halpern and his Nudge Units should be sent packing.

Oh, by the way, just in case any of you still think mask wearing is bona fide, look at those long time wearers of masks, the Chinese, who now have Covid in their millions. Chocolate teapots or what?

The second intervention is the machinery of Government is being oiled by wokeism and how this is diverting crucial Ministerial decision-making. Allison Pearson, in her Telegraph column, reports on Gareth who retired last year from  his job as a lawyer to a major public inquiry after  three-and-a- half years engaged by the Cabinet Office.

Gareth asserts, “ the Cabinet Office strives hard to promote a “woker than thou” attitude and since the pandemic this went into overdrive. It encompassed the entire woke canon from compulsory “unconscious bias” training through finger-wagging  lectures on “micro-aggressions”, white fragility/privilege, critical race theory, BLM and structural racism, aka all the shibboleths of the progressive Left, but under a supposedly Conservative government”.

According to Gareth, the Cabinet Office:

“is symptomatic of the whole  civil service structure, which treats the elected government with disdain and pursues its own ultra-woke agenda, which is entirely contrary to official policy”

I suggest as so much energy at the heart of Government is being devoted to these absurdities then the chance of recognising the big picture and making crucial decisions for the benefit of our Country when the time comes are going down the plughole. Take the gas price situation and what Hunt and Sunak need to be doing from here as an example. In the hue and cry over Liz Truss’ short-lived Premiership, the Treasury and the OBR pronounced that energy support for people and businesses would cost the Exchequer £150bn. This panicked the markets and bye, bye Truss and Kwarteng. This estimate has turned out, surprise, surprise, to be nonsense on stilts. The current price of gas is back to pre- Ukraine invasion levels and is likely to end up costing the Exchequer from here diddly squat. In effect, this means most, if not all Hunt’s ill-advised energy cost-inspired austerity measures should no longer be taking place in March’s Budget, as we will be upwards of £100bn better off. What chance Whitehall and their  pet Ministers, Sunak and Hunt, move positively on this development? It will be an interesting test of how mentally buried they all are under the baggage of wokeism.

The final intervention follows on frighteningly neatly from the above. This week, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby,  announced  that he will be diverting £100m of Church funds into a research programme to investigate the “shameful” involvement  of the Church of England into its accumulation of wealth from slavery. The funding would also support  “communities affected by historic slavery” as well as funding to pay for further research into dioceses’, cathedrals’ and parishes’ historic links with slavery.  

While they are about it, perhaps they should investigate sending small boys in Victorian times up the Bishops’ residences to clean their chimneys. Sadly, the Rev Marcus Walker of the Save the Parish campaign group, has hit the nail on the head when he observes, “Suddenly the Church has money. After decades of telling us that there is no money to fund the churches and priests who keep the Church alive on the front line, suddenly they have found £100m behind the back of the sofa. Only last year they told us they couldn’t find £12m which would have cleared all the deficits run up by churches which were caused by Covid, or the £24m which would clear the deficits in the dioceses.

How can the Church have the brass neck to ask for another penny from its parishes again?”

You may be thinking what has this got to do with threatening the British way of life? Rural churches, in particular are the cornerstone to so many of our communities Fewer people attend these churches’ services now but they continue to do huge amounts of pastoral and secular care in those communities. In addition the church is usually the most prominent and much loved building in those communities. I and many others have spent years helping to raise the money to keep our local church going. Why should we carry on doing so when we see Welby spending £100m on pursuing his guilt complex? As Rev Marcus Walker implies, another part of the British Way of Life is facing extinction. You can read more about Welby barking up the wrong tree in this excellent article by the mercurial Tom Winnifrith.

The City Grump has spent some 40 years in the City of London. He started as a stockbroker’s analyst but after some years he decided he was too grumpy to continue with the sell side of things so he moved to the buy side and became a fund manager for the next 20 years, selling his own business in the 1990s. Post the millennium, he found himself in turn chairing a stockbroker, a financial PR company, and an Exchange. He still keeps his hand in, chairing a brace of VCTs and investing personally in startups. The City Grump’s publications are available here.