Re: Britain is falling into a mawkish fantasy

On 8/24/26 10:48 AM, Julian wrote:
> I don’t know how many readers have visited the grave of Dobby the house- 
> elf, but any who have should immediately be sectioned and have their 
> subscriptions to The Spectator canceled.
> 
> This strong course of action occurs to me after reading one of those 
> stories that can make you laugh, cry and smack your head into your hands 
> all at once. It relates to a “memorial” which apparently sits on 
> Freshwater West beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The area is run by the 
> National Trust – a charity which used to look after the UK’s heritage 
> sites.
> 
> The beach in question was where filming took place for Harry Potter and 
> the Deathly Hallows. Since then, fans of the film – which spawned a new 
> generation of mewling, ungrateful actors – have been laying stones and 
> pebbles at the spot at which Dobby died, many of them with messages on 
> (“Here lies Dobby, a free elf”). The National Trust has already asked 
> fans not to leave socks on the pile (don’t ask), but stones to form a 
> kind of cairn appear perfectly acceptable.
> 
> At this stage it might be worth noting that “Dobby” is a fictional 
> character. No such house-elf ever existed. Therefore you might think 
> this rather whimsy-infused “memorial” should not detain us much longer.
> 
> Except that this is one of those increasingly typical moments in modern 
> Britain when a fantasy world and the real world come into conflict – and 
> the real world loses the encounter. A £430 million ($580 million) 
> undersea cable linking the UK and Ireland had been due to pass through 
> the area but – thanks to Harry Potter fans complaining in their hundreds 
> – was rerouted. Indeed, the cable now passes nearer to some Bronze Age 
> human burial remains in order not to disrupt the non-existent grave of 
> the never-existent Dobby.
> 
> The project manager of this farrago told the media that the hundreds of 
> complaints the company had received had ensured that it took the issue 
> very, very seriously. Simon Ludlam said that, in the end, the cable 
> “went quite close to some real Bronze Age remains, but we avoided 
> Dobby’s grave.” This solution made “a lot of people very happy,” he 
> added, “and Dobby’s happy.”
> 
> At this point I would be happy to pull my head out of my own hands and 
> smack Mr. Ludlam around the face with a sock, a stone or anything else 
> that came to hand.
> 
> Firstly, due to matters of taste. Of all the sentimental attitudes which 
> are most painful, surely the worst is this sort of modern British 
> “whimsy.” It is as one with the sort of people who, after the death of 
> Elizabeth II, chose to leave Paddington Bear toys among the flowers, or 
> pass around memes online of Paddington leading the late Queen towards 
> the gates of St. Peter.
> 
> The Queen Mother’s favorite poem – “The Gate of the Year” – includes the 
> line that on treading into the unknown you should “put your hand into 
> the Hand of God.” It seemed telling that by the time her sovereign 
> daughter died the country had ditched the hand of God as hard to put 
> faith in and replaced it with a theology in which the departed should 
> instead place their hand into the hand of Paddington Bear before being 
> received into glory.
> 
> Until the past few years, I would have dismissed such sentimental 
> claptrap as being distinctly un-British. Further, I would have said that 
> while such mawkish sentimentality might still thrive among the Irish, 
> the British would surely keep it at bay. I mention the Irish with 
> justification. Some years ago, a motorway bypass in County Clare had to 
> be altered in order to protect a “sacred” fairy bush. Local “experts” 
> had claimed that if the fairy bush was destroyed to make room for the 
> £100 million ($135 million) bypass then the new roadway might suffer a 
> “curse.” More recently a new housing scheme in County Wicklow found 
> itself at the center of a similar row after a “fairy tree” was put at 
> risk. Fortunately the fairy tree survived as the builders built around it.
> 
> In relating these stories I do not intend to plant in the minds of 
> readers any idea that the Irish are a superstitious and backwards 
> people. I do not say that at all. But it does seem slightly regrettable 
> that protecting the sacred fairy bush of County Clare, or the fairy tree 
> of County Wicklow, seems like perfectly sensible propositions beside 
> diverting an undersea cable in order to avoid disturbing the site of a 
> fantasy character’s burial place.
> 
> Which brings me to the second problem in all this: that such a story 
> seems awfully telling about a country and its priorities. Over recent 
> years Britain has found it impossible to complete almost any major 
> infrastructure projects. Most of the time this is due to the discovery 
> of a rare earthworm or – as anyone who has tried to restore a property 
> in the countryside will know – that there is evidence of bats. You do 
> not have to have seen a bat, merely have evidence that bats may once 
> have eyed up your property, and you’ll discover that your house is no 
> longer your own but has fallen into the joint custodianship of Dave from 
> the local council and any passing bat.
> 
> Even this is merely a good-ish intention taken to a typically 
> bureaucratic extreme. No such excuse can be made for the Dobby’s grave 
> phenomenon. It is simply indicative of a country where the adults have 
> all taken leave of their senses and handed over the decision-making to 
> children who were never told “no.”
> 
> I suppose that if these are the new rules of the game there is an 
> argument for playing along. I would be happy to start by claiming there 
> is a horcrux to be found somewhere in the oil reserves in the North Sea 
> and that unless we start extracting all that oil we risk not finding it 
> and therefore failing to defeat the Dark Lord. Which is not the maddest 
> energy policy I’ve heard lately.
> 
> 
> 
> Douglas Murray

oh no muh capitalism destroyed "culture" (if u call it that for ye 
limeys) with its consoomerism,

whatever will we do??

😱😱😱

-- 
hi, i'm nick!
let's end war 🙃