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Samizdata quote of the day Of course, none of this stopped the 40,000 England fans at Wembley on Tuesday evening. The popular “Ten German Bombers” might have been banned by the FA, but the fans sang it anyway. So too endless renditions of “Three Lions” and “Sweet Caroline”, without even a modicum of social distancing.
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On Tuesday evening, after the match, I quietly celebrated Mass in church, without singing. While at prayer, we were being enthusiastically serenaded by the celebrations of a very different kind of communion in the pub over the road. I concede, given that our church was flattened by the Luftwaffe on the first night of the Blitz, I was not all that horrified at the thought of the RAF shooting down German bombers. No, the irritating thing about it was more visceral: others were allowed to sing while we were being silenced.
– Giles Fraser
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I found it amusing, and ironic, after the FA’s nannying, that the score should be Two Nil.
Someone up above has a wicked sense of humour.
I used to work for a German based company. The company threw a party for all the staff to celebrate their centenary. We were taken on a coach tour of Hamburg where the guide told us about the RAF having flattened most of the town centre but had somehow managed to spare the tax office.
Even if they had destroyed it all the tax office would have been one of the first things to be rebuilt.
I know a fantastic Chinese restaurant on the reperbarne in Hamburg; used to go there every visit! Not a euphemism!
Giles Fraser is, or was, a hard Leftie Christian last time I checked. He seems to actually want to be free to follow the rituals of the Church of England at least to the extent that football fans may follow theirs. His point is valid. He appears to have noticied that the State is hostile to his occupation/calling.
He does need to take the next step in the deductive process, the hardest of all, to conclude that the State is evil, the Crown is evil and the Queen, as Head of State and of his Church, and as the personification of that evil bureaucracy, is presumably content for evil to be done in the name of her Corporation Sole. So where does that leave his church?
Mr Ed (July 4, 2021 at 6:16 am), the literal next step in Giles Fraser’s odyssey would surely be to recognise that certain bishops in western episcopal churches are more woke than Christian, and (to apply his own words) that is part of the reason – it’s not just because they are “cowed” – why they
(not compliant only, or even especially, with lockdown rules). Your description of him as a ‘a hard Leftie Christian’ suggests he needs a bit of a wake-up call in that regard. Maybe he is getting one.
If he wakes from the woke-sleep, he might in further steps recognise other things. I don’t think it would be any use for the first of them to be his worrying that
Although she did very occasionally allow things to be known in Blair’s years, she clearly believes the power of her direct private advice is enhanced if PMs know it is instead of, not the prelude to, ordinary-style public political pressure of the kind they know and themselves use.
I’ve been known to encourage her majesty with jokes and hints 🙂 – but as we after all did get Brexit, one hesitates to fault her approach there. Generally, I perfectly see that, like Queen Susan’s magic horn in the Narnia stories,
But I don’t think we’re obliged to ‘presume’ the Queen is ‘content’. It is not her power that is being enhanced by lockdown or woke statism. As for blowing any horn – things are bad here, but I see a greater need across the pond just now.
There was always a solution to Fraser’s conundrum. Sing anyway.
That requires balls, which were obviously in short supply in that church.
@Bulldog Drummond. Indeed, yet his is a religion built on the blood of martyrs.
Relevant to my prior comment’s linked joke – and (very indirectly) to the OP’s point – is this transatlantic urging of Elizabeth R to exercise a prerogative power. 🙂
Sadly, I fear the letter is an invention and was not in fact written by our noble queen. The clue is in the split infinitive “to again burn”. (Next, they’ll be asking us “to boldly go” there!) 🙂
Giles Fraser should be allowed to sing in Church.
Once Christians would not have accepted this.
And no one should accept it.