In Competition No. 2612 you were invited to provide an extract from an issue of The Spectator from the year 2109.
Back in the mid-1950s competitors were asked to look into their crystal balls and come up with content from The Spectator of 2080. In the report on the results, they were sternly berated for a lack of inventiveness; Orwell and Wells casting a long shadow over the entry.
Viewed from 1955, the future was somewhat soulless and monochrome, and we are no less pessimistic 60-ish years on, it seems. This time around the smallish postbag was cheering in its quality but spirit-dampening content-wise. I longed for a sliver of optimism amid the dystopian visions of post-apocalyptic social breakdown, remorseless dumbing-down and the death of grammar and spelling as we know it.
Light relief did come in the shape of, among others, Susan Therkelsen and Mike Morrison, who were unlucky losers. The winners, printed below, get £25 each. G.M. Davis pockets £30.
The Spectator has always believed that the best government rules with a light hand. It maintained that credo when, a century ago, parliamentary government proved light-fingered. It never abandoned it even during the cataclysmic social breakdown of the past 50 years and the aggressive rise of foreign empires. Life expectancy may have shrunk, but enterprise and self-reliance thrive. The ascendant politico-economic formations in Britain, such as the Dorking Gang and the Hecatomb raiders of Muswell Hill, even more dynamic than the Russian wealth-creators of the post-Soviet years, have built a viable market, and even a functioning criminal justice system. If this entails harsh and arbitrary procedures, a Hobbesian nightmare for the losers — well, nobody promised them a rose garden. Still concerned for life and property? The good news is this week’s Spectator offer: 10 per cent off a complete Hecatomb or Dorking family protection package.
G.M. Davis
Dear Mary, My wife and I have invited friends to celebrate Blair Day but have already used up our annual 0.0001 carbon allowance. Have you any suggestions?
A.W., Swindonopolis
Dear A.W., Yes, it’s tricky, even in our subtropical February, to put on carbon-free festivities. If you can part your hunting pet from its prey you might get enough tallow for a couple of small candles, and any young people in the party can run the treadmill to heat up some acorn punch. Celebrating St Anthony and St Cherie should be a joyous, colourful day — drawing pictures of bonfires brings all ages together (just don’t think of lighting one!). On cloudless nights the temperature may drop sharply, so how about utilising the cats? Friends of mine issued each guest with a household moggie to hug, and the warmed company spent a lively evening hunting fleas and comparing bites.
D.A. Prince
Another letter has arrived from the Television Licensing people about my great-grandfather’s refusal to pay his licence fee. Apparently we now owe 17 million Eurodollars. His original protest was to do with someone called Ross, but nobody knows now who that was, especially after the National Archives so conveniently burnt down just before the first trial of Blair for war crimes. Children in particular rarely even know nowadays that a television was a kind of fixed-position receiver-screen. Does anyone know why they still have a licensing authority?
On Sunday I attended the requiem mass in the new church dedicated to Blessed Margaret Thatcher in Cadogan Square, for the last living survivor of the resistance movement to the egregious Mandelson’s declaration of himself as Lord Protector and abolition of the monarchy. Hard to think now that it took so long for the restoration of the late King William.
Brian Murdoch
Contents Paj
Politix: Israel and Palestine celebrate 50 years of union. First Chinese President in Washington. Paj 3
Network crash distorts electoral results in Slough.On-line referendum rases pension age to 83. Paj 4
Education: ‘Duming down’: rush for university places as 100% of nation’s students skor A grades in all their A levels. Paj 5
University news: ‘Doctors galore: no plumers’: PhD graduates now number 28% of the population. Editorial coment. Paj 7
Readers rite: House of Comons sleez enrages readers. Paj 9
Envirement: ‘Buterflies, birds and bears’: Borisela Jonson visits museum of extinct speshees. Paj 10
Energy update: The lites go out: closing of Europe’s last oil-fired power station — ‘Death of a dinosor’. Paj 12
Travel: ‘On yor bike!’ Completion and opening of the M1 cycleway. Paj 18
Comp: U R invited to provide extracts from an isue of The Spectator for the year 2209. Paj 29
Shirley Curran
The Noughty Report
Herbert Johnson-Waugh
In Competition No. 7709 you were invited to submit a light-hearted poem in the style of a government report written 100 years ago. As ever, some of you excelled yourselves, but your grasp of history was slightly dicey. ‘Quantitative easing’, for instance, was not a colonic remedy, but something to do with banks; and Viscount Mandelstam did not succeed to the throne until 2023. I had to look up some of the words (e.g. ‘co-terminus’), and I often wished I hadn’t had to. Johnny Whitworthson, one of the competition’s dynasts, regretted the ‘nurofenic hours spent/ On citizen empowerment’, but his rhyme of ‘ring-fence’ with ‘centre of excellence’ was a trifle forced. There is space in the winners’ enclosure for 15 this week, with the bonus $100 belonging to the Connolly quads from the State of West Anglia.
Bill Greenwell
Leader: It is easy, in a post-nuclear, permanently winter-shrouded wasteland, where those not eating rats must eat each other, to forget the benefits wrought by the recent apocalypse. Attendance at such churches as remain has risen as far as depleted populations have allowed, our economy has seldom been so laissez-faire and General Slaughter’s plan to shoot the many in order to increase supplies for the few has engendered the welcome return of ideology to British politics. We do not wish to deny the utter desolation and despair of this now grey, unpleasant land; we are no mere contrarians. But we should be remiss in our duty if we did not point out the tremendous scope for improving British life afforded by its recent virtual obliteration.
Another Opinion: In this incinerated world, argues the Johnson Mutation, isn’t it time to rescind the smoking ban?
Adrian Fry
No. 2615: Tips of the slung
You are invited to provide a lesson in the facts of life courtesy of either Mrs Malaprop or the Revd William A. Spooner. Entries to Competition 2615 by midday on 23 September or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
Comments