BY GARY MCGHEE
‘The English have no taste, which is why they set so much store by it’ (Joe Orton)
It is likely that Joe, being a homosexual non-conformist, wasn’t describing himself. To say that homosexuals tend to have better taste than straights is a truism, but also a stereotypical trap. I know gay men who have no taste whatsoever and don’t care a damn about it. We English like to think of ourselves as having good taste, but the evidence tends to say something different.
Have a cursory glance through the interior décor of houses for sale on Rightmove. What you will discover there is a crushing uniformity of colour and trend.
Trend is not good taste, it’s just the latest fashion, the current ersatz design marketing strategy, which relies on the dynamics of keeping up with the Jones’s else peers will think you have no ‘taste’.
Oh, the irony! One particularly ghastly manifestation of this is the sea of grey which predominates ideas of ‘taste’ these days. Fifty Shades of Grey, but without the sadomasochistic eroticism, although the greyness does makes me want to slap someone.
My partner and I recently researched used Volkswagen campervans and also looked at the latest new models. What did we find? You guessed it. But not just a bit of grey here and there, not some nice contrasts between grey and other colours, but EVERYTHING grey, inside and out. It was most depressing. We decided to buy a panel van in the end so that we could take charge of the colour palette with the conversion.
What is this obsession with grey all about? Does it reflect a colourless, drab state of mind?
I visited East Berlin before the wall came down and that was a sea of run-down dilapidated grey. It was gloomy and reflected how depressed the people were. But they had every reason to be miserable living under Communism, and they eventually threw off those shackles. Now what excuse do people in the West have?
We are in the throes of a big housebuilding splurge in England. I wrote an article published in this magazine called Little Boxes some years ago. The scenario I described is getting a whole lot worse.
Just about every town and village is now being blighted by uniform, ugly new housing estates made from ticky-tacky and spit. Lots of grey is of course compulsory. New kitchens, whether cheap or expensive run the gamut between greys and a token concession towards beige and off-white. The description BLAND looms large.
Is this a reflection of people being boring and dull, lacking imagination and individuality, willing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of fitting in and not sticking out?
I think it does. Oh, and don’t start me off on the awfulness of Disneyfied attempts at ‘character’.
An adjunct to this socially and politically is the fact that ‘Diversity’ is being presented and inveigled on the populace as something that it isn’t, which is diverse. It is conformity in practice. Diversity, Inclusion and Equality (DIE) is the governing mantra, but it is no more than Orwellian doublespeak, which means the opposite of what it claims. (It may seem a stretch to link this to interior décor, but we are encouraged to regard grey blandness as good taste. Something that it isn’t in other words. You will have grey walls, floors, carpets and you will be happy).
‘Watch the grey men as they dive from the 14th floor’ (Black Friday by Steely Dan)
Black Friday is becoming Grey Friday. You will own nothing that isn’t grey and be happy. Economies are tanking, the world is in turmoil, wars are afoot, and only elites will be allowed to live in colour. Control the Multikulti levers! Let the plebs eat fake, grey food and live in fake, grey houses and sit in front of colourless computers with grey screens. The New World Order is red in tooth and claw, and only they can wear red.
The countryside will be festooned with vast fields of ugly solar panels and giant wind turbines. Onshore electricity pylons won’t be cabled underground, they will leer at you from above. Productive farmland is being ripped up and replaced by concrete because, well, who wants to eat real food when synthetic flavourless stuff can be grown in a characterless lab? At least Soylent is green. The hideousness of brutalist architecture and post-modern urban sprawl replacing the beauty of an English village. The cutesy Thatched cottage, the oak-beamed farmhouse, the atmosphere and quaint charm of an olde-worlde pub, the ornate grandeur of a country pile, the elegance of a Georgian townhouse, the charm of a Victorian terrace. They are the very definition of beauty, the embodiment of aesthetic values that are quintessentially English. They speak of centuries past that generations have sought earnestly to value and preserve. The new houses with their fake beams and fake bricks, artificial facades and plastic grass are an insult, an assault on our senses and sensibilities. Even the mid-century trendy interior design fraternity with the penchant for tarted up plywood and wood panelling is just a Scandinavian-style-influenced iteration of beige, only more expensive. Whitewashed wood flooring just a retread of greyness.
The New World Order hate beauty. They despise heritage. The young are being programmed by them to aspire to ugliness. Ghastly snot-coloured hair worn stupidly is nothing new but at least the 70’s Punks were rebellious, we questioned everything, we were genuinely set against the established order.
Ugliness and stupidity have now been indoctrinated BY the establishment. They do as the mainstream tells them, think what they are told. Mental illness is just a byproduct of this. Gender dysphoria and self-mutilation, now a deliberately encouraged and growing social contagion, is just collateral damage.
The Body Politic is being literally and figuratively corrupted on purpose. By design. Even the flipside of the aspirational, rather than neo-Communist young, seek to make themselves look ugly. Make-up by Dulux. Eyebrows that would make Joan Crawford blush. Notions of beauty twisted into barbed Barbie Dolls and butt-headed gym boys. Airheads R Us. Everything presented as the authentic self, but which looks, and is, artificial.
Yes, I am a snob, and what of it?
Some of us must be in this dank, grey design dystopia.
Taste and beauty are things to be worn lightly but regarded respectfully. They are too important to be only in the eye of the beholder. Just because YOU like bland and colourless doesn’t mean that it should be inflicted on the rest of us.
Taste and beauty are entities that have a clear relationship with a state of mind that is contemplative and sensual. I love things that are smooth and sexy to the touch. Surfaces to writhe around naked on. Napa leather, suede, velvet, fur, silk, merino wool, Egyptian cotton.
Sir Roger Scruton in a sea of colour and individualism
Taste is also about smelling great. A decent, established barber shop cologne – another English invention – defines and sets a gentleman apart. The chemical factory designer concoctions are so awful that the manufacturers are compelled to produce a special line of niche and more expensive fragrances to offset them.
I’ll let the late Sir Roger have the last word:
Beauty is vanishing from our world because we live as though it did not matter.”
― Sir Roger Scruton, Beauty.
Gary McGhee is a semi-retired screenwriter, loving the outdoor life with his partner in the Norfolk countryside. Gary was ‘red-pilled’ before it became fashionable, and believes in liberty, freedom, modernism, and defying herd-mentalities.
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