IN HIS Budget speech, Jeremy Hunt allocated £1million to support a proposal for the National Memorial Arboretum to honour an estimated 750,000 Muslims who have fought for British armed forces. No mention was made of the hundreds of thousands of Hindu and Sikh personnel who defended the Empire.
However, the Chancellor’s virtue signalling did not stop there. He followed that announcement by allocating an extra £2.5billion for day-to-day funding for the NHS and signalled yet another productivity review.
Furthermore, TCW can exclusively reveal, an additional £5million has been set aside to rename St James’s Park as the Royal NHS Park. The adjacent Birdcage Walk is to become Covid-19 Memorial Way.
A spokesperson for the Treasury told us: ‘In this day and age it is not felt appropriate nor sufficiently inclusive to have one of London’s best-known parks named after an ancient Christian who may or may not have been the brother of Jesus. Had James been of a different faith or known to have been active in the Palestine liberation movement we would not be proceeding in this way.’
There are exciting plans for the renamed park. On a plinth in the centre will be a reinterpretation of Rodin’s The Kiss. This will remind visitors of a pivotal moment in the pandemic when Health Secretary Matt Hancock passionately embraced his lover Gina Coladangelo. Matt will be forever remembered as the man who made millions of hearts go ‘Boom!’
Each Wednesday evening in the park there is to be a son et lumière featuring a performance by one of the many Nurse Dance Troupes. The dances will be set to music composed by rebel rockers Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Mick Jagger who persuaded the hesitant to take the miracle lifesaving injections.
A mural to be painted on the wall of Duck Island Cottage will be based upon Arthur William Devis’s depiction of the death of Nelson. Titled The Near Death of Boris, it will show the limp but heroic body of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He will be seen surrounded by some of the heroes of the pandemic including a perspiring Chris Whitty, a concerned Patrick Vallance, and Neil Ferguson busily working on his statistics. (Note to readers: Johnson did not die, he just had a severe bout of propaganda coupled with mild sniffles).
As parkgoers stroll along the paths they will see beneath their feet poems extolling the wonders of our NHS such as Michael Rosen’s These are the Hands. Adjacent to the Blue Bridge they will observe an encased re-creation of Tracey Emin’s exhibit My Bed. It will illustrate the pressure that NHS nurses had to cope with during the darkest days of the Covid-19 crisis. The visitors’ reflective appreciation of the health service will be interrupted, but enhanced, at noon each day as loudspeakers announce that it is the time for a five-minute ‘clap for carers’. Non-clappers will be asked to vacate the park.
At the entrance to the park there is to be a new gold-embossed gate displaying Shelley’s immortal line: ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair’.
To access the Royal NHS Park visitors will be required to book an appointment at least two months in advance and be prepared for late cancellations owing to circumstances beyond the control of the Royal Parks. Visitors must be able to prove that they are up to date with all Covid-19 vaccinations. A booking fee of £5 will be charged.