Dear Editor
Your piece by Liz Hodgkinson had me whooping in agreement. I am increasingly finding fewer people are prepared to engage in any sort of intelligent conversation about current affairs. You are right, any mention of Trump is the quickest way to shut down on everything. There is one faster – that is Tommy Robinson, of course.
Criticisms of the constant covid jab reminders are completely verboten. Any criticisms of NHS simply result in someone proclaiming the wonderful service they received under the knife for some recent operation and probably all too eager to show us their scar. They think that all NHS staff are gods. I dare not venture toward the risks inherent in the bird flu or fat jabs. That could get physically dangerous, me being forcefully reminded that it’s is all for the good of the ‘overworked’ NHS.
We must assume that those who don’t want to engage know they have no facts to back up their assumptions. They would be beaten in argument as they have done no research and simply fall back on whatever the media has told them to believe. People have got used to being told what to do.
My favourite subject of the climate crisis con gets the total shut-down treatment every time. Never a chance to explain the actual figures, against the costs of the Net Zero malarkey and electric cars and so forth.
I call it the ‘Kipper Tie Syndrome’. This emanates from my first mentor in journalism back in 1965, a colleague who got me on to the ladder as assistant editor for a successful engineering magazine of the time. He was a wonderful writer and had written a novel and showed me the first draft.
He used his story as a vehicle to take exception to people who could never talk about ideas – just things like menus, the weather, kitchens, holidays and so forth. I think that’s the clue. He used as an illustration an occasion when he and a friend were ‘chatting up’ a couple of ‘birds’ in a cafe. He was getting on quite well with one woman, delving into ideas and minds as he so loved to do, when his mate asked one and all, and quite loudly, what they all thought of Kipper Ties! (You can set the date for this by that fashion statement.)
Conversation, discussion even disagreement and dispute are so important now. Just keep talking, for God’s sake. Don’t let anyone tell us to avoid subjects. I can number on one finger of one hand how many of those authentic dinner table conversations I have had in the past year. It’s as if the Stasi are looking over our shoulders all the time. Heads in the sand isn’t a sufficiently strong metaphor for this awful reality of censorship and self-censorship in a country we once knew to be free.
David Hipperson
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