Lord Lucan lies under Newhaven beach. Or does he?
The £125 million of ‘levelling up’ dosh slated for Newhaven by the government has to be good for a town which has long deserved such investment. A shower of gold doubloons, presumably, for the buccaneering Brexit future promised by Ian Duncan Smith.
None of the money, though, is to be spent on making safe the harbour breakwater – the mole – and harbour wall, so the sandy beach can be enjoyed once again by locals.
But why? We’ve had one explanation about French ownership. But let’s imagine this is an example of the post-truth post Brexit world we live in. Please indulge me. Picture if you will an elaborate double bluff that uses a missing toff to hide an inconvenient truth about the upper echelons of society.
In 1980, Lord Lucan was wanted for the murder of the family nanny and last sighted in Newhaven. He is assumed to have caught the ferry and disappeared abroad. The resulting mystery is as compelling today as it was back then when local post-punk band The Dodgems correctly told the pre-post truth truth in declaring that “Lord Lucan is missing”.
The post-truth is that the truth about Lord Lucan’s disappearance lies buried deep under the beach because Lucan never left Newhaven on the ferry. His disappearance was staged so he would remain a mysterious missing figure in perpetuity, a ‘dead cat’ for the press to draw our attention away from all the other things that have gone missing from the ruling elite. If indeed they were ever there in the first place.
What a bunch of bankers
The signature qualities of “fair play” and “spirit of the game” etc are the very ones that, despite the Lucan dead cat, were so conspicuously absent from the men who abused the Australian cricketers during the Ashes series.
The Long Room at Lords, once a bastion of the Establishment, revealed itself to have become a hollowed-out mini theme park setting for a bunch of poltroons clad in their silly MCC ties and blazers to abuse a talented bunch of Australian sportsmen for not playing “in the spirit of the game”.
In cricketing terms where was the “spirit of the game” when England cricket Captain Douglas Jardine ordered his players to bowl bodyline in the 1932-33 Ashes tour of Australia?
By the same token, is it the “spirit of the game” or “fair play” for those braying MCC popinjays to benefit from shorting the pound, trousering high returns from opportunist hedge funds and then paying as little tax as possible?
In 2023 this Australian team simply played by the rules, not something one commonly associates with the sort of people in the Long Room who abused them. They may follow the cricket, but they mainly just follow the money.
Taking the Mickey?
So, why is it deemed to be such an English thing, like a birthright, to be able to understand, and live by, the code of the “spirit of the game”? Is this an inclusive thing, in that it embraces the mean spiritedness of Robert Jenrick’s instruction to remove Mickey Mouse murals at an asylum centre for lone children?
Presumably the order from Jenrick was on the grounds that the children should not forget that they are alone, homeless and not yet safe from harm or danger.
Taking the lead from Jenrick, we should ensure that another minority, the UK’s privately educated children, are reminded that they, just like the asylum seekers, are a minority, not part of mainstream society.
So privately educated children should be barred from using public facilities or joining, or playing in, teams in the public domain. After all, the facilities and opportunities they enjoy are exclusively theirs, and not available to children in state schools.
What are they like?
The privately educated Establishment likes to think itself as possessing and protecting such qualities as Decency, Integrity, Honour, Truth, Style and Chutzpah. When the actual qualities, as demonstrated by their political wing, the Conservative party and their press cheerleaders, are:
Cynicism, Corruption, Greed, Lies, Bluster, Entitlement, Greed, Racism, Xenophobia, Exceptionalism, Greed and Laziness.
Let’s not forget David Cameron’s “tum tee tum” as he turned his back on a Britain he’d just royally fucked over and headed for his absurd shepherd’s hut on wheels: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bprjHYY90lo
Carry on at your own inconvenience
As my 12-year-old son came into the room singing Where have all the doctors gone? to the tune of Where have all the flowers gone? I was reminded of another inconvenient truth about Broken Britain. The state of our public conveniences, whether that be the decline in numbers open to the public, or the lack of urgency in fixing and refurbing them.
So where are we expected to go when nature calls? Imagine the impression given by the closed toilets that greet visitors to Lewes as they head into town from the station; a common experience throughout Britain:
“Welcome to Lewes. We hope you enjoy visiting the attractions in this historical town. Please urinate or defecate in our shops, coffee bars and those tourist attractions that have working toilets.”
