It takes a particularly obsessive mindset to politicise everything in life, but the UK media seem happy to report without scorn or derision that latest wails from totalitarian obsessives about the UK’s new passport design, which features humans (the previous one features various feathered friends).
Let us see some of the complaints reported:
The redesign focuses on UK figures and landmarks from the past 500 years.
Architect Elisabeth Scott and mathematician Ada Lovelace are the only women to feature.
Government officials defended the design, but Labour’s shadow employment secretary Emily Thornberry said it was “exasperating”, adding: “We exist.” “This is an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women as well.
“We have had this fight about bank notes and now it’s about passports.
“I just feel as though we are here all over again.”MP Stella Creasy also criticised the redesign, while gender equality campaign group the Fawcett Society accused the government of “airbrushing” women out of history.
It was Stalin who was the past-master of airbrushing. Why? To influence what people think, and what they remember. And those who regard a passport design as an opportunity to make a political statement are a lot closer to Stalin than they would probably care to admit. This is a passport, and it is there to get you through passport control and that is that.
And it is not as if all the men chosen are particularly outstanding, Constable and Harrison I would put forward, but that is what you might expect in these days:
The seven men showcased in the new passport are playwright William Shakespeare, artists John Constable, Anish Kapoor and Sir Antony Gormley, architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, computer pioneer Charles Babbage and John Harrison, a clockmaker who invented the marine clock.
Is no one going to call out these objecting people as (i) boring (ii) obsessive (iii) totalitarian* in their quest to ensure that a political agenda is rammed into every aspect of life? If you seek to control what I see, you want to control what I, and others, think? By what right? Why on Earth should what I see be determined by someone else’s political obsessions? Will no one rid us of these turbulent beasts, by laughing them into the dustbin of history?
* In the full sense, regarding everything, like Mussolini dentro dello Stato, and a matter for politics.
Not really Stalin.
Joe still clung to Classical Marxism – the industrial workers as the Revolutionary Class and himself (and pals) as the “intellectual vanguard”.
But the clever German Marxists (associated with a town called Frankfurt) were upset that the workers of the West (especially Germany) had not risen up to create the Marxist utopia.
So they reached out to new groups supposedly persecuted by capitalism…..
Ethnic minorities, homosexuals, women…….
Then they (the Frankfurt School Marxists) fled Germany (due to the ethnic group many of them belonged to – a group not loved by the National Socialist German Workers Party) and came to America.
Specifically to the academic community of New York City and then California – and, by the 1960s, out into the world (second and third generation students).
Hence “Political Correctness” (ironically a term the Stalinists had originally used against the Frankfurt School) and now “Critical Theory”.
Warning – state any of the above publically and you will be declared “paranoid” and “mentally ill”.
Even though every word of this comment is true.
As for the passport.
If there must be such things (and they did not use to exist – one could travel without them) they should have one lady in them.
The Queen.
And the passports should be large and black.
The SJWs have a point in this case.
Where would ya’ll be with/out the Iron Lady?
I seriously doubt the people who are complaining about the lack of women want to see Thatcher on their passports. Might be fun to tweak them with that option, though.
You chaps beat me to it… the best response to these vermin would be to add Margaret Thatcher.
Really, why not someone who did something useful like Isambard Kingdom Brunel, or James Watt ofr instance. But no, some poncy artists.
Paul Marks, after the publication of The Devil’s Pleasure Palace by Michael Walsh, the poisonous role of the Frankfurt School in USA and Europe have been discussed extensively in certain circles. What to do is the next question begging an answer.
I’m not sure we have time to figure it out before the disappearing of both USA and Europe as we know them.
And why not add Agatha Christie, and JR Rowling?
Look, Mr. Royd, if yer gonna be that way about it I’d nominate the Professor, hands down. More interesting books than Miss (Mrs.??) Christie’s*, and at the very least much better naming than Miss Rowling managed.
*I will not contest the assertion that this judgment is a matter of taste. It’s just that mine is better than that of those who have the lack of imagination to prefer Miss Christie to the Professor. Harrumph.
Also, what with all this “Feminism” and Women Are Oppressed and Men Are What’s Wrong with the World and whatnot, I would pick up my marbles and become a male instanter, were it not that I happen to LOVE being a girl!
Although my last only stated the truth, albeit couched in the manner of a jest, I have to say that seriously I agree with Paul.
Not that I have any vote in the matter, of course, but it does seem to me meet, just and proper that the passport bear Her Majesty’s image if any, since it is as Official a document as I can imagine and is, in a way, the presentment of Britain abroad.
I wouldn’t mind Liz, but would you really want Chuck when, god forbid, his time comes?
Julie, which Professor? I am based in Australia, after all. And the question seemed to be about female role models to put on notes. Come to that, Emma Watson would be an inspiring person- she has good looks, and a degree, and she seems to be a happy person. I don’t know her political views, but she seems like someone nice to know.
I think Julie is reffing JRRT. Passport to Mordor and all that. Single entry visa Mr Baggins?
Galadriel for role-model, then?
Well, they could sort out the rubbish at the start of the thing which, in the last version of the dark blue passports accurately stated Her Britannic Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs… Now it is just her Secretary of State, singular – and she has an awful lot of those. Indeed a female monarch and a single secretary would take us back to and odd day or two in the period 1707-14… In passing, though, it shows the over-riding ignorance of our rulers.
NickM has got it. Yes indeed, the Professor. And as I am not into Feminism=Patriarchiphobia (did I do that right?), I see no reason at all to concern myself over whether it’s a male or a female visage on the British passport.
Emma Watson? My dear, another lefty, which I guess is just as de rigueur amongst Theatre Celebs on the East as on the West side of the Atlantic. However, if she seems a nice person and a happy one, I am all for that and wish her well. Just tell her to change what thinks are her politics.
If you must have a female on the thing, put on the one who belongs there anyway — HM, QE II (not the ship).
Back to the Professor. If you were going to use somebody from Middle-Earth, it would have to be either Gandalf (for after all, he is the Icon) or Aragorn (for his human-style heroism, very Bditish [sic] indeed).
Or, of course, Shadowfax.
Can you make it play God save the Queen when you open it like one of those annoying Christmas cards? I’d pay extra for that.
RlJ, LOL!
By the way. On giving Mr Ed’s posting another quick run-through, I see reference to something the article’s quote calls a “gender equality campaign group.”
So satisfy everyone. Put Boy George on the thing and call it Done.
Thanks Julie!
If one wants to be political about it, lets have pictures of Englishmen noted for killing industrial quantities of foreigners starting with the Crusades. A nice glossy colour picture of the Queen. The lyrics to the second verse of the national anthem. A shiny silver crucifix embossed on the back cover encircle by the usual boilerplate, Elizabeth Regina II, fid. def., mon dieu et mon droit and so on. And of course, it needs to be blue.
I think it’s very important to respect one’s history and culture.
I am actually shocked at the absence of goodthink displayed in the passports.
Of course these are political choices, it’s stupid to pretend they are not just because people we don’t like complain.
We would gripe if they were pleased.
I suppose we should be grateful that Benedict Cumberbatch didn’t make the cut. Damn those fucking politicians!
Well if we are going to have politicised passports, we have lost the argument but won the battle. However, Roue le Jour’s musical passport would be superb.
But then I would put in:
Sir Isaac Newton
Michael Faraday
Horatio Nelson
The first Duke of Wellington
MRAF Sir Arthur Harris
Sqn Ldr James MacLachlan DSO DFC** (One-Armed Mac), who flew night-intruder missions over occupied Europe despite having his left arm shot off below the elbow by a German 20mm cannon shell over Malta, hence his personal V-sign on his Hurricane.
Edith Cavell (facing a German firing squad)
A lady Air Transport Auxiliary pilot with Spitfire
Florence Nightingale
Boudicca (OK over 500 years ago, but who is counting?)
Were they black, Paul? I remember them as dark navy blue.
How can passports be politicized by totalitarians, if they are in and of themselves the result of totalitarian politics?
Quite easily Alisa. No one is obliged to have a passport, and indeed, you may leave the Common Travel Area of the United Kingdom, the Channel Isles, Man and Republic of Ireland without one, but you may find yourself unable to land anywhere and progress past a port of entry. A passport is essentially a necessity for international travel. However, all it need to is to identify the person to whom it relates and that person’s status for the issuing State, so as to facilitate passage. A passport could be perfectly neutral thereafter, with no doubt security features for it to be hard if not impractical for it to be forged or tampered with successfully.
The step of the totalitarians is to insist that if there are features on a passport that relate to people (other than the bearer), e.g. images of noteworthy people, then the decision on who to put in should be taken with a view to promoting an equality agenda, and not to have put in the requisite number of women along with men is wrong and in some cases, they argue unlawful. The sub-text being something to the effect of ‘The images that you see on a passport are a statement as to the relative importance of men and women in society, and they must reflect women and men equally, in order to promote equality‘. This is the obsession that I object to.
It should be fairly obvious to a reasonable person that say, Sir Isaac Newton is not of note because he was a man, but because he was Isaac Newton, failed alchemist, Master of the Royal Mint, physicist (or experimental philosopher) and mathematician. Put him on a passport and the cry would go up that he was a man. Thus the entire agenda is driven by an obsession with an irrelevant aspect of the figures involved.
However, I might just want to put Lord Reith and Sir James Savile together under a BBC logo on a passport, just to emphasise an aspect of our last 80 years or so. And the ability to resist such temptations would be a test of suitability for what public office there would be in a freer world.
Ed, if it helps, I wasn’t referring to any particular set of totalitarians politicking. Question: if you travel outside the UK without a passport (let’s imagine for a second there is a country in existence that would let you in for a vacation without one), would you be allowed back in?
Alisa, the answer is strictly speaking, ‘yes’, but a yes that is ‘yes-ish’, the Immigration Act 1971 starts off saying at section 1 (1):
So if you can establish that you have the ‘right of abode’ in the UK, which can be done by a passport or a UK birth certificate for some people, you are in, or if they are satisfied that you do have that right, then you have the right to come and go ‘without let or hindrance’, but it is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, as without photo ID, you might not ‘be’ who you claim to be.
Thanks, Ed.
Mr Ed: most EU citizens can enter and leave the UK without a passport. UK citizens cannot, because the UK does not provide ID cards; but i can.
Getting to the main topic: i am not sure about the idea of putting portraits of people on passports. If the intent is to make Brits proud of their country (though i believe that “proud” is not the correct word in this context), then the first Elizabeth would seem a better choice than the second — nothing against the second, of course.
As for other women, I approve of Thatcher and Agatha Christie. Boudicca’s relationship to modern Britain is purely geographical, not to mention that we don’t know what she looked like.
As for men, i had not even heard of some of those names. I suppose that some were included because they can be paired with their creations, which look good.
Shakespeare you can’t leave out, since he sells as well as Agatha Christie; but Newton and Darwin are more important in my opinion. I also like Harrison, and Babbage and Ada Lovelace, but then why not Turing? (which would have the additional advantage of representing the gay community.)
I’d also like to see Locke and Hume, though Paul Marks would not be happy about the latter.
Does it take an American to point out, if women are to be included, that a random draw from the database of “page 3 girls” be used?
Brad, there wouldn’t be room to portray their assets- or the face would be too small to be seen! Plus, money is meant to be spent, and these would be hoarded. And the makers of the original page three girls would go out of business. Who would want to hand over money if the money has what they want?
See, people only grow up, or turn into, lefties because they don’t believe in reincarnation. If celebrities didn’t feel guilty about being born with good looks, then they wouldn’t advocate ‘social’ justice. So the ‘fall-back’ philosophy for libertarians should be something that incorporates rebirth, if only to batter opponents into intellectual submission. “What, you’re a racist? Most of Asia believes in rebirth, and you, a Westerner, are going to tell them they are wrong? Shame, shame, shame!!!”
Andy, Andy, Andy. Here we go again. Good looks — are you thinking of Ernest Borgnine, or Charles Bronson? Or perhaps Steve Buscemi, definitely a lefty. (Don’t know about the first two.)
I have more trouble when it comes to the ladies. Marie Dressler maybe? I can’t say Elsa Lanchester was a raving beauty, but she had so much wit and charm that you just can’t include her. And I’ve never heard anything about the politics of any of them….
I know. Meryl Streep. Face like a horse, flaming lefty. Also exceptional actress, on of the best on the silver screen by my lights. But you didn’t specify excellence in the lefty celeb’s profession. *g*
So, Andy: I refute your thesis THUS! You can so be a beast without being a beauty!
Shame, Shame, Shame! You must be a racist.. Thus I claim to refute you without answering you! Also, Arnie, who was a Republican governor. He got his movie roles by building his muscles, so he knew he had deserved whatever fame and money came his way. you never hear him worbling about ‘social justice’!
I do wonder about the wisdom of putting living people on the passport. I am sure that Sir Antony Gormley and Sir Anish Kapoor lead blameless lives (though personally I do not think much of their work), but should that change, we would all be left with very embarrassing passports. If someone had had this bright idea in the 1970s we might have had Sir Jimmy Savile on our passports, and that would have been a very bad thing.
Snag:
Yes, the old passport was a very dark navy blue, so dark, in fact, that it was functionally black. And most certainly not “machine readable”. What a vulgar concept.
According to the late Judith Hatton there was a time – before the First World War, naturally – when there were only two countries you needed a passport for: Russia and Mexico.
Patrick, indeed, both sclerotic bureaucratic empires of sorts. As there was little welfare, there was no taxis towards any given state, and no reason to regulate entry. I happen to know some English people with late-19th century German emigrant ancestors, who moved to the UK for some reason or other (not being royal), and presumably just turned up and got on with things.
I do however recall reading of an Englishman going to Scotland during the reign of Elizabeth I presenting his passport at Berwick. Presumably it was then a ‘diplomatic passport’ with some guarantee of safe conduct.
This has to be the ultimate non-event. WTF looks at the visa pages of passports? Apart from some tinted chappie out in Bongo-bongo land?
And thinking of him. Exactly what reception is Linda Lovelace going to get out where tea towels are a male fashion statement? Is the intrepid traveler supposed to spend the flight inking her in a hijab, to avoid musselman offense at her naked fizz?
B-i-S. The very triviality is what bothers me. If these fanatics get their way over these trivialities, I would venture that they will be sure that they can get their way on more important matters, first what you say, then what you think, or whether you ars allowed to think.
I’ve always found, Mr Ed, it pays to be as gratuitously offensive as possible with these people. Find all their buttons & hammer them as hard as you can. If some particular expression offends them, slip into every sentence. Positively revel in it.
Has a strange effect.
I’ll vote for Clarkson, Hammond and May, Iron Maggie, the Vulcan, the Hood, the Matilda. Oh yeah, and the EE Lightning.
Besides, Julie, you can still beat the SJ crowd by espousing reincarnation, and then calling the SJs ‘racist!’ if they even try to refute you.
Oh, I won’t wait for them to try to refute me, Royd. I’ll just start out by giving them the fish-eye and then screeching R*********************SSSSTTTT!!!!!!!!! at them. Hopefully the racket will be so unbearable that they will go forth and drown themselves. “It’s a known cure for tintinnitus, you know,” she added helpfully.
I like Bloke in Spain’s approach. It sounds about right to me.
What I fear is that the U S will soon require a pass port to transit between the states. If that happens we’re screwed!
gongcult: Perhaps this would be done indirectly via the guise of the US Federal income tax system. If you live in State A that has an income tax, and deduct your State income tax from your Federal liability, which I understand to be permissible under Federal law, then one could imagine that the IRS would be the ideal body to monitor those moving between States to ensure that they have put their State (and therefore Federal) taxes in order before moving. A Tax Passport might be the way to ensure that movement is properly monitored… (But life in Texarkana might be a bit less easy).
For those States with no income tax, perhaps one would be free to move to another such State or an income tax State, but not the other way round, until you have produced your papers….
Or, in the interest of non-discrimination between States, all inter-State change of residence (or movement) might require a passport…
And the Soviet Internal Passport is reborn.
Mr Ed, I think you’re confusing casual “transit between the states”, which gongcult was discussing, with a permanent change of residence. As to his point, I can’t see that happening because it would require border checkpoints (and guards) at every point of contact between contiguous states. That’s completely infeasible; no state is going to go to that trouble, and the federal government hasn’t the resources to do it. We can’t even control our border with Mexico; there’s no chance of controlling the border between, say, Wyoming and Idaho, or even Vermont and New Hampshire.
As to your point, I believe what you’re getting at is essentially federal permission to change your state of residence. But from their perspective that’s irrelevant; they view all states as mere subsidiaries of the fedgov anyway, and it doesn’t matter to them which one we choose to live in. Unless you’re completely “off the grid” (which most of us aren’t prepared or competent to do) they most certainly know where you live if you file a federal income tax return, or receive Social Security benefits, or interact in just about any manner with the fedgov. And they certainly have no interest in ensuring that you’ve paid your state taxes. So I don’t see this as a material issue either.
The Soviet “internal passport” you reference is really just a system of national identity papers. We’re not there yet, but our Social Security number pretty much fills that niche. True, we don’t have to show it to any policeman or federal agent on the street, but we do need it to get a job, enroll in college, open a bank account, get a driver’s license, board a plane, enter a federal building, etc. It’s not quite as blatantly intrusive as the old Soviet system, but it still serves the purpose and I can’t seen any real need to go that last step.
Laird,
Don’t you think it’s simply atrocious that people can go back and forth, say from Indiana to Illinois, or from S.C. to Texas to California and right on up to Seattle, without so much as a by-your-leave from the Authorities? The PCD’s American counterparts’ heads would explode. (Ref: BBC show 1990.)
Besides, imagine the sense of awesomeness one would have, having absolutely say over who may or may not go where.
Who will keep the public order? You can’t just let people wander around loose, lock a flock of headless chickens.
Goodness, even more than the usual number of typos. Must not type before coffee…must not type before coffee….
To Julie: i’m reminded of a quote from Da Mare (Richard 1st) that goes something like this” the police don’t create disorder, they protect dis order…”
gongcult,
You win the *Eee-ew-ewwww!!!* prize of the day.
Congratulations! To Nick (Who He Today) Gray and Mr Ed (who committed a great one recently), we can now add gongcult to our gang of glorious punsters.
😉
To Julie : Thanks !!! Sometimes I can be real penny. And sometimes I look a bit pfunny.
That you should be “punny” . I’m outdoors with my gloves on so typos are inevitable.