In recent weeks, several local councils across Britain have publicly called for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Initially I planned to tell these delusional, jumped-up, pompous blowhards to stop wasting their time on matters that don’t remotely concern them, and instead focus their attention on the places they were actually elected to serve. Now, however, I’ve changed my mind.
I’d much rather our councillors spent their days pointlessly grandstanding about a foreign war 3,000 miles away. Because it’s when they focus on their local area that they start causing problems.
Take the Labour-run council in Lincoln. At the weekend, the city should have been enjoying its spectacular annual Christmas market. The oldest of its kind in England, it has always drawn huge numbers of shoppers from across the country. Last year, over the course of four days, it attracted more than 300,000 people, generating an estimated £15 million.
This year, however, the local council cancelled it – because, apparently, its popularity made it a danger to public health.
“We understand some people’s disappointment,” said council leader Ric Metcalfe. “However, we simply could not continue delivering an event that has been deemed a significant risk to public safety.”
Exactly how a Christmas market could pose a significant risk to public safety, I don’t know. Were stall holders in danger of putting their backs out when attempting to carry home their enormous takings? Were customers brawling over the last novelty snow globe? Was the mulled wine laced with absinthe and Carlsberg Special Brew?
Whatever the reason, it seems pathetically joyless, not to say economically ruinous, to cancel the whole event, rather than try to reduce any overcrowding by introducing a system of ticketing, or spreading the stalls over a wider area. In the age of Amazon, it’s become miserably rare to see our streets thronging with eager shoppers. And now, in one of the few places it still happened, a bunch of meddling Left-wing busybodies have snuffed it out.
As a result, I suppose, the people of Lincolnshire will instead be doing their Christmas shopping online, like everyone else these days. Then the main danger to their safety will come from the thousands of extra delivery vans hurtling round their roads.
At any rate, this is just the sort of thing that happens when councillors start taking an interest in their local area. If only they’d been too busy writing an indignant open letter to Benjamin Netanyahu, the Christmas market could have gone ahead.
Spare copies
Many people bought Prince Harry’s autobiography. It seems, however, that a lot of them swiftly got shot of it. We Buy Books, the second-hand books specialist, reports that Spare is “our most traded-in biography of the year”.
No doubt heartless commentators will seize upon the news as yet another opportunity to deride the book’s author. I, however, prefer to take a more charitable view.
After all, just because lots of people are giving the book away, that doesn’t necessarily mean they think it’s a steaming pile of tedious, embittered, whining, pampered, embarrassing, disloyal, self-pitying rubbish. On the contrary, perhaps they’re giving it away because they think it’s brilliant – and are desperate for others to experience its brilliance, too.
They’re thinking: “What a truly magnificent literary masterpiece. A stirring testimony to its author’s wisdom, courage and lyrical virtuosity. Absolutely everyone should read it.
“Tragically, however, not everyone can afford to. With a recommended retail price of £28, this unmissable tour de force is out of the reach of all too many readers – especially while the nation remains in the throes of a cost-of-living crisis.
“There is, therefore, only one thing for it. To ensure that as many people as possible can benefit from the Prince’s piercing insights into the human condition, I must urgently give my treasured copy of Spare to a second-hand bookseller.
“In any case, there is no need for me to read it again – because it is already seared into my memory forever. Especially the immortal passage in which the author recounts the time he tried to soothe his frostbitten penis by coating it in his late mother’s favourite Elizabeth Arden face cream.”
That must be it. How heartwarming it is to think that, at this very moment, countless thousands of public-spirited bibliophiles may be rushing down to their local branch of Oxfam or British Heart Foundation, eager to donate their copies of Spare. Parting with the book will be painful – but they can be sure that it will go to a good home. And then, soon after that, another, and then another.
Way of the World is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 7am every Tuesday and Saturday
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