PETER HITCHENS: When even the stairs are bossing us about, it’s time we rebelled
At the very height of the Blair regime, the story was told of the New Labour MP who went to get his hair cut. He was wearing headphones, which the barber gently removed before proceeding. As the barber snipped, the MP slumped in the chair, as if asleep.
Quite used to his clients nodding off, the hairdresser continued till he was done, and then gently tried to wake his client. But he could not do so. An ambulance was called and the paramedics shook their heads glumly. The man had ceased to be.
It was only then that the barber thought to pick up the headphones. He put them to his ear, and heard not music but the unmistakable voice of Peter Mandelson repeating rhythmically the words ‘breathe in… breathe out’.
I was reminded of this jibe at the Blairite centralisation of thought and speech when I encountered the staircase pictured on this page today. It is at Paddington Station in London. It is one of several there on the same pattern, but I suspect there will soon be many more.
SIGNS OF THE TIMES: The staircase at London’s Paddington Station plastered with needless fusspot instructions
Of course I laughed. I also wondered if the yellow and blue colours of the Ukrainian flag had been deliberately chosen, as this has now become a symbol of virtue and selflessness.
Some of these admonitions are so needless that I am amazed that anyone thought it wise to display them. Some of the instructions are stupid. Surely it is far healthier for people to use the stairs than use the lifts. Why shouldn’t I or anyone else take the stairs two at a time if we feel like it?
But in general, how did we ever manage before station stairs were expensively plastered with warnings so petty and annoying that it would be unfair on nannies to call them nannyish?
Things of this kind have, even so, been growing in our midst for years, my favourite being ‘Contents may be hot’, on disposable coffee cups. I was recently shown a box of upholstery pins, which warned that the contents might be sharp. I have begun to check the bottoms of beer bottles to see if they have started to carry the message ‘Open other end’. It surely cannot be long.
But in general, how did we ever manage before station stairs were expensively plastered with warnings so petty and annoying that it would be unfair on nannies to call them nannyish, writes Peter Hitchens (pictured)
The warnings are supposed to be a protection against being sued. Much of this fusspot chivvying is a disease caused by (of all people) Margaret Thatcher and John Major, who stupidly and unforgivably licensed ambulance-chasing lawyers in this country. These human sharks are poised to pounce on every fall and spill, and turn it into a pay day. I am going to go on mentioning this act of madness until either I drop dead, or someone in politics realises that it can and should be repealed.
But this new development – the bossy staircase – is worse still. During the great Covid Panic, the Government got used to spending billions on telling us what to do. Stay at home, wear a mask, keep your distance, wash your hands, wash them again, don’t sing, don’t pray, don’t go to church, wash your hands yet again and for even longer, and so on.
Amazed at the way the supposedly lion-hearted people of Britain meekly submitted to this treatment, and even seemed to enjoy it, the Government (and authority in general) liked the sensation of power over others. So did many of their victims.
As I paused to photograph the oddity, my fellow passengers seemed not even to notice the peculiar sight.
Once, I think, you might have expected a small crowd to gather round, pointing and laughing. It’s still a long step to the ultra-obedient society now operating in China, where they can weld you into your home if they want to, and where failure to behave according to Communist Party rules can get you banned from trains and planes. Quite possibly having the wrong expression on your face can get you into trouble.
But it is also a long way from the free country I grew up in. Most of the building materials for a ‘Social Credit’ society of obedient automatons under permanent surveillance are now lying about all over this country, just waiting to be assembled into a vast smiley prison. Take care you don’t get locked up in it.
Free speech isn’t a one-sided conversation
I am pleased to say that Toby Young, founder of the Free Speech Union, has protested against the creepy sanctioning, without any sort of trial, of the unlovable video-blogger Graham Phillips.
Mr Phillips’s reports from the Ukraine front, which don’t follow the widely accepted view, have annoyed the Government. Toby points to the danger here, saying that the same punishment without trial ‘could easily be applied to another video-blogger who is a thorn in the side of one of our allies – Saudi Arabia, for instance – making it a sinister precedent. Indeed, had Jeremy Corbyn won the last General Election and frozen the assets of a dubious journalist taking sides against a Communist country he had declared an ally, such as Cuba, we’d be justifiably outraged’.
Toby has grasped that if you go around claiming to be in favour of free speech – as so many do these days – then you are in favour of it for people you don’t like, saying things you may even hate. A lot of prominent people produce a lot of wind on the subject, especially in the transgender and woke wars, but until they condemn the sanctioning of Mr Phillips, they aren’t in favour of free speech at all.
What are we to make of Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, now suggesting number plates for pushbikes? (stock image)
What are we to make of Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, now suggesting number plates for pushbikes? As a long-standing bicycle enthusiast, I disapprove strongly of my fellow cyclists riding through red lights and especially through pedestrian crossings. I’ve been known to chase offenders on my own machine, and give them a piece of my mind.
But number plates? There are millions of untraceable machines in garden sheds. They’re stolen all the time. And as the police seldom step outside, who will check for them? You might as well set up a national registry of spoons or screwdrivers. The only country where I’ve ever seen number plates on pedal cycles is North Korea.
But what really annoys me is that this is the same Shapps who, quite needlessly, has legalised the scourge of e-scooters. These weaponised toys are vastly more dangerous than pushbikes, and they lack their health benefits or green virtues. I would love to know what it was that persuaded Shapps to adopt this policy, proven to be stupid by the experience of every country that tried it before we did.
