The Steeple Times

Tag: culture

  • A Rotten Rose – Brian Rose: An Entire Circus of Idiocy

    A Rotten Rose – Brian Rose: An Entire Circus of Idiocy

    New contributor Nikolay Kalinan delves into the history of the American ex-heroin addict and wannabe Mayor of London Brian Rose and finds his curious claims to be rather hollow

    Several weeks ago, Brian Rose seemed to have it all; his odds of winning the London Mayoral election stood at 18/1 – 2nd place to Sadiq Khan – and he was organising what he called “the largest outdoor campaign in British political history” supported by 2 million subscribers on his ‘London Real’ YouTube channel and 1.6 million followers on his Instagram pages.

     

    Yet, the truth be known: Rose’s image of supposed runaway success is nothing but total fakery. In an opinion poll, only 2% of the respondents said they would vote for Rose, which is actually less than the amount of people who expressed their support for Niko Omilana – someone who doesn’t even have serious election policies apart from the genius pledge to make Boris Johnson “shush.”

     

    For years now, ‘Brian The Piss-Drinker’ has created an image of his being a knight in shining armour, but that hides his utter incompetence and shallowness. Indeed, this was evident back in April 2020 when he conducted an interview with the fruitcake David Icke. During that discussion, Icke claimed that COVID-19 was not real, and was actually spread by 5G towers – no surprises there – with the purpose of creating a fascist world order.

     

    When faced with criticism regarding the Icke interview, which was quite justifiably subsequently removed from YouTube, Rose first responded by stating that he was simply protecting freedom of speech, and then by him re-uploading the interview to his own video service, the Digital Freedom Platform. He then doubled down on the whole controversy by releasing interviews with more nutjobs, including the angry and delusional radio host Alex Jones and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

     

    Aside from Rose’s pandering to COVID-sceptics giving a sense of how great a wrong’un he genuinely is, a look at whether he has kept his promises in regards to the Digital Freedom Platform he created illustrates further the deception that surrounds this American ex-heroin using transplant.

     

    Initially, of that, Rose said that the medium would be a new video platform “of the people, by the people and for the people.” Almost a year later, and with some £720,000 raised for the project, you would think that he would do what any “politician of the people” would do and fulfil his promise by officially opening up the platform but, of course, he didn’t.

     

    Instead, Digitial Freedom Platform has been transformed into a library of content for amateur conspiracy theorists and is also being used as another piece of marketing for Rose’s mayoral campaign. So, to recap, Brian Rose spent £720,000 donated to him by ordinary people on creating InfoWars 2.0 and what did they get back? Nothing.

     

    Things don’t get any better when you look at Brian Rose’s election manifesto, which looks like a bunch of regurgitated campaign promises from candidates such as Shaun Bailey and Laurence Fox. Rose has aped such pledges as that by Bailey to put thousands of police officers on London’s streets and build thousands of homes that will cost just £100,000 each, as well as Fox’s pledge to end lockdown and create a festival celebrating London’s culture.

     

    In fact, it just feels as if Rose has copied and pasted whole sections from Bailey and Fox’s manifestos and then replaced some words and numbers with ones of his own. In summary: Here is someone incapable of actually coming up with anything original.

     

    Brian Rose is inevitably heading for doom on May 6th, and the truth – whether he likes it or not – is that it doesn’t matter how much money he spends on campaigning or how much he says that he is a crusader for “freedom of speech.” The reality is clear: Brian Rose won’t become the next Mayor of London because he’s simply nothing other than an utter nutter.

     

    Pictured top: Naughty boy Brian Rose being given a ticking off (and a fine subsequently) for campaigning when and where he shouldn’t have been.

     

    A Rotten Rose – Brian Rose: An Entire Circus of Idiocy – New contributor Nikolay Kalinan delves into the history of the American ex-heroin addict oddity and wannabe Mayor of London Brian Rose and finds his curious claims to be rather hollow.
    A Rotten Rose – According to an interview he gave to Susannah Butter, published in the ‘Evening Standard’ on the 14th April 2021, plainly delusional “Brian Rose is already referring to himself as the Mayor [of London] and says Londoner’s are too.”
  • Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados

    Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados

    Avocados and a “lack of British chefs in the kitchens” get the goat of out-of-touch British peers just as Norman Fowler calls for their numbers to be cut

    This morning, the Mirror revealed that “pampered peers” in the House of Lords have spent 2020 complaining about the quality of avocados just as, in a year when the country teeters on bankruptcy, the taxpayer has propped up their loss-making dining rooms and bars to the tune of nearly £2 million in subsidies.

    Of this news, at a time when Marcus Rashford has shamed the government over its meanness towards providing free meals for poor school children, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Alistair Carmichael told the paper:

    “Boris Johnson stuffing the House of Lords with his dodgy mates is clearly having its effect.”

    “Instead of playing at Downton Abbey, these peers should be looking beyond their own dinner plate and address the real problems people across the country are facing.

    Shockingly paid £305 plus travel expenses for each and every day they attend, yet charged just £3.70 for a full English breakfast, peers also “griped” about the halting of the sale of alcohol of the Parliamentary Estate due to coronavirus restrictions. One even whinged that “there were not enough British chefs in the kitchens.”

    Elsewhere, last week, Lord Fowler, the lord speaker of the House of Lords, quite rightly argued in the Guardian that “there are too many lords” and remarked on Boris Johnson adding another 52 peers during 2020.

    He questioned the sense of the resulting total number of 830 – “despite a cross-party agreement three years ago that numbers should over time be reduced to 600” – and questioned the fact the Lords is almost 200 larger in number than the Commons “and far in excess of what needed to transact its business.”

    Going further and wading into the row over the disgraceful appointment of the “cash-for-access” tainted Tory donor Peter Cruddas by Johnson “in defiance of advice from the Lords Appointments Commission,” Fowler remarked:

    “As we have just seen, its recommendations can be overridden by No 10. The result is that a prime minister has the power on his or her own to add peers to a house of parliament that can make and, within limits, unmake laws. Is this what the public expect in the third decade of the 21st century?”

    “When making appointments it has become obvious that governments wish to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. Both of the initial announcements of new peerages in the last 12 months have been made when parliament has not been sitting. It simply adds to the impression that the choice of peers is the exclusive preserve of No 10 – and the less publicity the better. This may be fine for the government’s public relations team: whether it is fine for parliament is another matter.”

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    Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados – Moaning House of Lords – Avocados and a “lack of British chefs in the kitchens” get the goat of British peers just as Norman Fowler calls for their numbers to be cut.
    Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados –In March 2015, ‘The Steeple Times’ reported that “peers had complained about being left ‘scarred’ after having had their dinner bookings cancelled and were angered by the size of the menus, ‘chaotic’ table layouts and ‘inferior cappuccinos.’”
    Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados – Moaning House of Lords – Avocados and a “lack of British chefs in the kitchens” get the goat of British peers just as Norman Fowler calls for their numbers to be cut.
    Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados – Norman Fowler, Baron Fowler PC is quite right to call for reform of the House of Lords. A 2017 “analysis of voting, speaking and expenses records in the Lords, [showed a] ‘something for nothing culture among peers” by the Electoral Reform Society astonishingly revealed “115 Lords – one in seven of the total – failed to speak at all in the 2016/17 session, despite claiming an average of £11,091 each, while 18 peers failed to vote but still claimed £93,162” and that expenses claims had soared by 20% in just two years “at a time when public services have been under strain.”
    Pampered Peers Prattle About Avocados – In January 2018, the ‘National Geographic Discovery Channel’ reported on a peer complaining about a pork chop that was “uneatable, tough and dry, and clearly cooked for hours before.” Of some “gone off” smoked salmon, another member added: “It really was disgrace.”
  • Moron of the Moment – Lady Victoria Hervey

    Moron of the Moment – Lady Victoria Hervey

    Just as ultimate dumbo Lady Victoria Hervey shows herself up in stating “Fuck Black Lives Matter,” fellow aristo Dr. Bendor Grosvenor calls for the return of objects “looted during the British Empire”

    Dimwitted dope Lady Victoria Hervey just cannot help but shove her stilettos straight into the proverbial. Whether be it her short-lived relationship with “he who doesn’t sweat in Pizza Express (Woking branch’)” ‘Randy’ Prince Andrew, or flogging knickers in her long since gone-bust shop in Knightsbridge displaying the words “Yes Please” across the crotch, here is a woman with utterly no shame and an utter incapacity to accept any kind of blame for her own failings.

     

    Formerly nicknamed ‘Toff Totty Vicky,’ Lady Victoria predictably showed herself up by banging on about her associations with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell last year. This weekend, the bubbly blonde went further in posting a picture of the defaced statute of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia on her Instagram page. She not-so charmingly captioned the snap: “Don’t ever tell me this is acceptable behavior [sic]. Fuck BLM [Black Lives Matter].”

     

    Described by even a fellow socialite, the late Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, as “unpleasant” and “a right snob” previously, “luxury is in my blood” Lady Victoria was contradicted by the Reverend Robert W. Lee IV, the general’s great-great-grandson. He “gave his blessing for the monument to be removed” on Thursday according to the BBC and asked: “If today is not the right time, when will it be the right time [to remove the statue]?”

     

    Going further of this situation on Twitter on Sunday, though talking in the context of the related British protests, fellow aristocrat Dr. Bendor Grosvenor – a distant relative of the present Duke of Westminster and a man best known for his stint on the BBC’s Fake or Fortune? art documentary series – tweeted:

     

    “Let the Colston statue’s removal be a prompt for councils and museums across Britain to take action to remove similar artworks from display, *as well as* returning the thousands of cultural objects looted during the British Empire. Start now. We’ve waited too long.”

     

    Sadly, yet not unsurprisingly, Lady Victoria – whose ancestor Frederick Hervey, 1st Marquess of Bristol ironically is best remembered as a “social reformer” and “an MP [who] voted for the abolition of slavery in 1807” – has previous form. In 2003, this ‘aristoprat’ stated: “It’s so bad being homeless in winter. They should go somewhere warm like the Caribbean where they can eat fresh fish all day.”

     

    Shame on this irrelevant ignoramus; it’s not Black Lives that don’t matter, it’s instead Victoria Hervey that doesn’t matter.

     

    Moron of the Moment – Lady Victoria Hervey on Black Lives Matters – Just as ultimate dumbo Lady Victoria Hervey shows herself up in stating “Fuck Black Lives Matter,” fellow aristocrat Dr. Bendor Grosvenor calls for the return of objects “looted during the British Empire”
    Lady Victoria Hervey with the Duke of York at a social gathering; supporter of the abolition of slavery and “social reformer” Frederick William Hervey, 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol (1769 – 1859).
    Moron of the Moment – Lady Victoria Hervey on Black Lives Matters – Just as ultimate dumbo Lady Victoria Hervey shows herself up in stating “Fuck Black Lives Matter,” fellow aristocrat Dr. Bendor Grosvenor calls for the return of objects “looted during the British Empire”
    Lady Victoria Hervey’s offensive Instagram post was unsurprisingly met with disdain by many. One responded: “Wait, hold up Lady are you saying Fuck Black Lives ???” Another added: “But think you got to be careful saying fuck BLM… That’s not acceptable TBH. It’s offensive.”
    Moron of the Moment – Lady Victoria Hervey on Black Lives Matters – Just as ultimate dumbo Lady Victoria Hervey shows herself up in stating “Fuck Black Lives Matter,” fellow aristocrat Dr. Bendor Grosvenor calls for the return of objects “looted during the British Empire”
    Dr. Bendor Grosvenor’s, by contrast, sensible tweet.

    Classic clangers from former ‘It Girl’ Lady Victoria Hervey:

     

    “I am Lady Victoria Hervey – it doesn’t get more British than that.”

     

    “Unless it’s champagne, I can’t handle it.”

     

    “I do have a day job.”

     

    “My career always goes much better when I haven’t got a man.”

     

    “A baby is easy – you hand them over to a nanny!”

     

    “I’m not stupid. I’m not a dumb model.”                    

     

    “[I aim to become] the next Kate Winslet – but with class.”

     

    “I have had four past lives, three of them as a man. I was a composer in 17th-century Paris, I made materials in India and in Ancient Greece I was a famous politician. In Ancient Egypt I was keeper of the oils for the Pharaoh’s wife, and I love oils so it all kind of fits.”

     

    “What annoys me is when these families have got like 12 children and we’re paying for these kids… They work out that they make more money being on the dole than having a job, they just laze around.”

     

    “The real irony of this is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.”

     

    “Travelling is in my blood, and so is liking luxurious things and spending.”

     

    “I haven’t given up on men, there are a few of them around, but I keep leaving every city I meet them in.”

     

    “Everyone from Europe wants to buy houses in LA.”

     

    “I was too old for Jeffrey Epstein… [He seemed] very charming… He was a very well-liked guy.”

     

    “I’m not one of those kind of girls, I don’t like going to dinners with ten models invited… I was very young and impressionable, Jeffrey was a very charismatic man.”

     

    “I haven’t seen [Ghislaine Maxwell] since September [2018] at a friend’s baby shower… I don’t think anyone is going to find her. She’s gone far away. She’s a bit like a James Bond character. She’s quite a unique person and I don’t believe anyone is going to find her… I don’t think we will ever see her again, it’s going to be like Robert Maxwell continued; she will continue that family mystery.”

     

    “I had no idea what was going on [with Jeffrey Epstein]… It’s extraordinary it’s the case, it’s a wild story.”

     

    “I suddenly thought, I’m just Victoria Hervey… Horrible.”

     

    “I don’t want to make enemies.”

     

    Pictured top: Lady Victoria Hervey with Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged madam and procurer of girls for paedophile Jeffey Epstein.

     

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  • A Box Office Balls-up

    A Box Office Balls-up

    Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea council’s decision to approve replacement for Kensington Odeon with a 63% smaller cinema is deservedly condemned as a “box office balls-up”

    The much-loved Odeon Kensington cinema closed its box office on the 11th September 2015 in spite of a campaign to save it backed by amongst others Richard Curtis, John Hurt and Prince Michael of Kent.

     

    Bar its original neo-classical façade, built in 1926, the unlisted building was subsequently demolished and with its destruction went a cinema premises that originally had a seating capacity of 2,370 in stalls and circle levels according to the Cinema Treasures website.

     

    Now, five years later, after round after round of battle between developers keen to construct housing there and activists keen to reinstate the cinema, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea planning committee have finally approved a new set of revised plans for the site.

     

    The new approved £400 million scheme (replacing a previous consent granted in 2016) gives Lodha Properties permission to build a six-screen cinema with just 887 seats as well as 67,000 square foot of commercial space. In addition, the scheme will include 71 private residences and 35 ‘affordable’ homes whilst the developer is also expected to contribute £1.4 million towards affordable homes off-site.

     

    Whilst the new Tory MP for Kensington Felicity Buchan predictably took to Twitter to claim this Conservative led council decision “very good news for Kensington High Street,” others were less pleased with the outcome. Referencing the decision as “undermining the character of our community,” the crusading From The Hornets Nest blog condemned the development as adding “yet more empty luxury flats to an already overcrowded Kensington market place.”

     

    Illustrative of the council’s “unhealthy developer alliances and disastrous decisions” according to one commentator, the new scheme unsurprisingly contains fewer social housing units and a cinema reduced in size by 1,483 seats. This, indeed, is not a community success but what another termed “a tragedy.”

     

    Of the decision Matthew Steeples, editor-in-chief of The Steeple Times added: “Here, yet again, is illustration of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council putting profit before people and cash before culture. The cinema component of this scheme is purely a token sop to attempt to attempt to silence critics of this out-of-touch council’s latest box office balls-up.”

     

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    A Box Office Balls-up – Kensington Odeon cinema scheme gets go-ahead – Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea council’s decision to approve replacement for Kensington Odeon with a 63% smaller cinema is deservedly condemned as a “box office balls-up.”
    A box office balls-up by The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea council – ‘From The Hornets Nest’ also highlighted that certain RBKC councillors including Daniel Moylan had accepted hospitality from those associated with previous developers involved in the Kensington Odeon redevelopment scheme. Such behaviour made Councillor Robert Davis of Westminster’s antics – highlighted in ‘The Steeple Times’ in February 2018 – look amateurish and frankly it is time for the final curtain call on such behaviour.
  • Heroine of the Hour – Lorraine Kelly

    Heroine of the Hour – Lorraine Kelly

    In suggesting obese people slim to avoid death by coronavirus Lorraine Kelly is spot on; she’s also right about Harry and MeGain

    The ‘Queen of Gorbals Gobbledygook’ that is Lorraine Kelly OBE has struck again. In her column in The Sun today, this “gritty heroine of our times” spoke for the nation in announcing: “Telling obese people to slim is no insult.”

     

    Quite correctly pointing out the obvious in stating: “This awful coronavirus is far deadlier to those who are overweight,” this “gritty heroine of our times” has yet again shown herself to be a lady of metal rather than a fluffy friend of the vain and the vacuous.

     

    Completely the opposite of daytime dimwits like ‘Verging on Vile’ Vanessa Feltz (whom could most definitely do with losing a few pounds herself) and the ‘Daytime David Icke’ 5G conspiracy theorist Eamonn Holmes in her approach, Ms. Kelly did not seek to “fat shame,” but instead shared her own experiences and offered solutions rather than highlighting problems.

     

    “This is not about going on a stupid faddy diet,” cautioned the Glasgow born presenter before adding: “It’s all about a lifestyle change and doing exercise you enjoy. My advice, which is hard-earned over the years, is not to have too much unhealthy food in the house, especially right now in lockdown when it’s so easy to sit watching TV while guzzling whole packets of biscuits. If you don’t buy the junk, you won’t be able to gorge on it. That’s not to say you can’t have a treat. You can. Just don’t eat a whole plus-sized bag of Maltesers or only leave a few Hobnobs in the biscuit tin.”

     

    Concluding on this particular topic, Ms. Kelly remarked: “I wish you luck” before turning to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Of this tedious duo she stated:

     

    “I’m confused. Harry and Meghan demand privacy and are suing a Sunday newspaper to ensure they are left alone… They want to have as normal a life as possible… And yet… They have moved to Los Angeles, the very hub of celebrity culture.”

     

    Here, Lorraine Kelly highlights a pair not in need of “luck” since they’ve already burnt through plenty of that. Instead, ‘Hapless Harry’ and ‘Mendacious MeGain’ just need lobotomies and one-way tickets to nowhere.

     

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  • TIGing a Drunken Duchess

    TIGing a Drunken Duchess

    The boozy bird the Duchess of Sussex and the newly formed The Independent Group have something in common; this “TIG moment” lover should become their leader

     

    The former Meghan Markle – a bizarre woman who ludicrously  likes to create “spaces to share” and “breeding grounds for ideas and excitement” – once had a blog called ‘The Tig.’ It was supposedly about matters “lifestyle” and on it she created “a hub for the discerning palate – those with a hunger for food, travel, fashion [and] beauty.”

     

    On this oracle of wisdom the busybody ‘Murky Mucky’ shared information that the world simply shouldn’t be without. On the now defunct site’s ‘About’ section, she bizarrely stated:

     

    “Several years ago I had a sip of wine called Tignanello (pronounced “teen-ya-nello“). But let’s be real – in the states most people said “tig-na-nello“…or just plain old “Tig.” The Italiano of it all gets a little tricky, so the bartender kept it simple; it was a glass of “Tig.“ So there I am, with very minimal wine knowledge and I take a sip of this wine. It wasn’t just red or white – suddenly I understood what people meant by the body, legs, structure of wine. It was an ah-ha moment at its finest. For me, it became a “Tig” moment – a moment of getting it.”

     

    “From that point on, any new awareness, any new discovery or “ohhhhh, I get it!” moment was a “Tig” moment. At New York Fashion Week understanding that clothes aren’t just pieces of fabric, but that they can be art. So Tig. Traveling off the beaten track and hand diving for sea urchin in Jamaica – understanding that travel is adventure and discovery, culture and surprise. A Tig moment, indeed. And the same could be said for my love of cooking & dining, for cultivating friendships that inspire you, for the idea of “beauty” and what that means to us. An understanding that comes with living your life to the fullest so that it bursts at the seams. An unbridled joy. An insatiable curiosity. That’s what Tig means to me.”

     

    We won’t bore you with the rest of this right royal pest’s drivel but yesterday, in Westminster, seven now ex-Labour MPs quit their party. They formed a group called ‘The Independent Group’ or more simply ‘TIG.’ Perhaps it might be appropriate that their fellow ‘Tigger’ The Duchess of Sussex become their leader.

     

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    TIGing a Drunken Duchess – Meghan Markle should go into politics – The boozy bird the Duchess of Sussex and the newly formed The Independent Group have something in common; this “TIG moment” lover should become their leader
    The Independent Group announced their creation in Westminster yesterday; they came across as a bunch of attention seekers.

    TIGing a Drunken Duchess – Meghan Markle should go into politics – The boozy bird the Duchess of Sussex and the newly formed The Independent Group have something in common; this “TIG moment” lover should become their leader
    Meanwhile, elsewhere, in New York, ‘The Modern Day Mrs Simpson’ couldn’t help but don the look of an extra from ‘Last Of The Summer Wine’ in wearing a flat cap. Here indeed was a right royal embarrassment.

  • Bozos, Burkas and Farage

    Bozos, Burkas and Farage

    Matthew Steeples suggests Nigel Farage is wrong about Boris Johnson’s latest gaffe about burkas in Britain

     

    On Wednesday morning, on Sky News, Nigel Farage was interviewed about what he thinks about Boris Johnson – a self-serving man who simply loves to stay in the headlines – comparing women in burkas to “bank robbers” and suggesting they “look like letter boxes.”

     

    Farage argued that “Joe Public is not interested” in this story and went as far to suggest: “This is just for the Westminster bubble… Politics is way to PC… You have to accept that sometimes people will be offended.”

     

    Clearly, Farage has misjudged the interest in Johnson’s clearly provocative comments. This may be the ‘Silly Season’ but wherever I go in the UK and whenever I am in a situation where there are burka wearers, people – of all backgrounds – have something to say. Some are of the opinion that we must be respectful of such whilst others are of the mind that the burka is nothing but inappropriate in a modern, Western society.

     

    In such places as Iran and Saudi Arabia, females, foreign and local, are forced to conform to the dress codes of those countries. Many here in Britain consider such “medieval” and “backward” and I, for one (as much as I personally loathe the bozo Johnson), certainly don’t believe anyone should be silenced from sharing their views for or against a ban on the burka in Britain.

     

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  • Illuminating the Illuminati

    Illuminating the Illuminati

    As ‘The Guardian’ explores the power of the Illuminati, Matthew Steeples argues that the few claiming links to such are nothing but mad, old cranks

     

    This morning, The Guardian’s Martha Gill asked: “What is the Illuminati?” in an article that jokingly suggested Googling such would put one at “great personal risk.”

     

    Referencing the organisation’s “top bananas – such as for example the Queen – [as] ancient lizards dating from an era before man existed” without even bringing the crackpot David Icke into it, politics, culture and neuroscience expert Gill made connections instead to Beyoncé, Madonna and Katy Perry. She called the Illuminati a “very clever cover-up” and a “myth” and a group that formed because a German philosopher named Adam Weishaupt “couldn’t afford the Freemason admission fee.” Overall, she concluded: “It is a powerful and savagely guarded organisation that secretly controls the entire modern world, probably while wearing cloaks. It has done this mainly through infiltrating the media and brainwashing everybody. It could be doing it right now.”

     

    Whilst such claims are both countered and at the same time mocked in such works as Roman Polanski’s 2010 film The Ghost Writer –where a fictional former British Prime Minister turns out to have been controlled by a very shady operation named the Hatherton Corporation – what Gill misses is that the groups that continue to claim links to the Illuminati – such as the Ordo Templi Orientis – are, in fact, actually nothing but a bunch of mad, old cranks.

     

    Follow The Steeple Times on Twitter at @SteepleTimes and Matthew Steeples at @M_Steeples.

     

  • Madness in Madagascar

    Madness in Madagascar

    Author and travel writer Sarah Tucker visits Madagascar and laments its future

     

    Every year I’m sent press releases that tell me I should visit a place before it loses what makes it special. Vienna, the Maldives and Istanbul have all been on the “go before they go” itinerary, but Madagascar had never been one of them.

     

    The reality is Madagascar is disappearing fast, or, alternatively put, the uniqueness of Madagascar is disappearing fast. The rainforests there have been transformed into terraces of paddy fields cut in huge swathes, with piles of bricks made of the red clay from the soil which fed those magnificent forests, where the indigenous lemurs sing and dance. And they do.

     

    Madness in Madagascar – Visit this special country before it declines – Author and travel writer Sarah Tucker visits Madagascar and laments its future.

     

    I spent fifteen days there with adventure travel experts Explore and travelled over 1,000 miles across the island. I found that my visit left me with emotions as intense as Hurricane Irma hitting at Force Five.

     

    On the east, it is cool and wet and the forests are still thriving. WWF and other ecologists like Patricia Wright, who discovered a new breed of lemur back in 1997, have made some headway against a corrupt government and ancestral traditions which verge on the quirky to the downright cruel. All cultures have such but, indeed, whilst visiting Madagascar – which is undergoing some sort of industrial revolution – I saw much of the fault in my own culture and its own quirks and cruelties.

     

    On the east coast, it is hot and arid, and more like the Africa I know, but therein lies the tragedy. And it is a tragedy. Once the rainforests have gone – and they will go soon – there will be nothing unique about this special island. Although it is not on the headlines of any news programme at the moment, for those who have visited in the past and choose to go again, you will mourn its lost.

     

    Follow Sarah Tucker on Twitter at @madasatucker.

     

  • Hero of the Hour – David Cornwell

    Hero of the Hour – David Cornwell

    Novelist David Cornwell (AKA John le Carré) speaks sense on the elite, Brexit and Donald Trump

     

    David Cornwell – better known as the novelist John le Carré – gave a rare interview in yesterday’s The Sunday Times. In it, he spoke candidly and revealed his beliefs that Brexit is something he “despises” and that Donald Trump “is such a horse’s arse.”

     

    In the interview Cornwell told the paper’s Bryan Appleyard:

     

    “Surely the definition of a decent society is: one, how it chooses its elite; and, two, how it looks after its losers. Now we choose our elite horribly badly and, as long as private education commands the scene, don’t talk to me about levelling the playing field — the social contract is bust in this country.”

     

    “We’re getting people who start their political careers at university and go in as special assistants to MPs, like those ridiculous people who were advising May [Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill]. We are run by the wrong elite.”

     

    “I understand why people who are socially deprived, with the safety net taken away from them and treated as second-class citizens, have every right to vote for some other dream. I understand that, and I understand it needs a desperate remedy, and fast, but Brexit isn’t the answer.”

     

    Of Trump, he added:

     

    “The Russian-Ukrainian money trail is the one that, combined with collusion in Russian electoral tampering, will, with luck, nail him.”

     

    Cornwell is spot on all scores and we salute him.

     

    ‘A Legacy of Spies’ by John le Carré is out on Thursday (Viking, £20). Pre-order from Amazon for £9.50 by clicking here.