21 April 2016
Ban Me, You Bastards!
Must I be the only one without a ban?
By Chin Chin
My goodness it makes me angry. Manchester University students debate banning Cameron from speaking even before he has indicated any wish to go there. Tiger Tatchell, too dangerous to be allowed out into the safe spaces of the world and exiled to a London flat. Cardiff students struggle to neuter Digger Greer lest her Australian accent be too strident for flappy Welsh ears. It’s not just live people either. Cecil Rhodes at Oriel , Queen Victoria at Egham, some dead parrot at Jesus College, Cambridge, all insults to safe spaces, memorials to colonialism, breaches of EU regulations (oops, wrong debate, sorry). For the peace of mind of students these monuments must be removed.
It just isn’t fair. All this bile is being directed at the political “A” list (assuming something dead can be on an A list – I am prepared to give the dead parrot the benefit of the doubt) and nobody, absolutely nobody, has banned me or removed my statue from anywhere. That isn’t because I haven’t tried. I have stood on the corns of the politically correct whenever I have had the chance. I have attended transgender conferences and tried to flirt with the lesbians. I have used the word “men” to mean “men and women”. I have even referred to Agatha Christie’s book “And Then There were None” by its original title. Surely someone, somewhere, should have banned me from something by now. At the very least they could have burned me in effigy!
It is particularly galling because I have Victorian ancestors. Many people from North London do, of course, but some of mine seem to have been Victorian in a particularly thoroughgoing sort of way. One great, great, great aunt was captured by the Mahdi’s forces in the Sudan and had to sit it out in a Dervish prison with her seven children (two of whom later became generals, naturally) until Lord Roberts arrived with his relieving force in the following year. Grade 1 imperial adventures, you might think. Surely one bred from such stock would stand out like a thorn in any safe space? Wouldn’t my presence at least make Dervish students uncomfortable? And yet nothing, absolutely nothing. What was the point of my great, great, great aunt going to all that trouble if it isn’t going to get me banned from speaking somewhere good?
Actually I think the whole system is corrupt. If you can’t keep your position as a political A-lister unless you have been banned, the left wing activists, who seem to have secured a monopoly of the banning process, are in a position similar to that occupied by Beau Nash in Regency Bath. They alone have the gift of social promotion. A ban from them can lift the dullest MP to cabinet or shadow cabinet rank. You can cavort around being as anti-LGBT as you like but, unless your efforts are sanctified by a ban, you might as well stay in bed.
That power like this should be exploited for money is hardly a surprise and there can be little doubt that as the Guardian hacks trawls through the Panama papers they are going to come across many payments related to it. How much did Cameron pay for his ban? Has the anti-Brexit lobby recorded it as a campaign expense? Did Germaine Greer claim a tax deduction for a payment against the profits of her many books? She should do, you know. Her ban can only increase circulation.
The practical question is, of course, how much a ban costs. As the money all passes through offshore trusts and companies there is little direct evidence available but some points are so obvious that we can probably jump to conclusions. The price must depend upon the quality of the institution. If it is somewhere where you wouldn’t give a lecture in any event, the ban will cause less of an outcry and that means it has less value. This may affect the value of bans from Manchester and I think we can assume that David Cameron, who as a Bullingdon man would hardly have agreed to give a lecture there, will have got his fairly cheap. Perhaps the “full Oxbridge” was just beyond his means. Germane Greer’s ban at Cardiff was presumably pricier since this is a University at which she had been invited to speak. Still, there is probably a 20% discount for Wales. Tatchell’s ban, on the other hand, must have been very expensive because he is already a well-known member of the LGBT community so it was bound to cause a stir. It will make a valuable addition to his reputation and I expect he paid a pretty price for it.
That in the end is the trouble. The price of bans is set by market forces and I just cannot afford one which will give me the right pizazz for Islington dinner parties. Am I condemned to sit forever surrounded by people vapouring on about the bans, fatwas and trolling from which they suffer while all I can boast is an unfair parking ticket outside Waitrose? What a come down from my great, great, great aunt!
No, something has to be done and I know what it is. I have always had my doubts about the vanity publishing industry, it striking me as odd that people pay for the publication of their unreadable works just so that they can claim to be published authors. Well, I have got the point now and I shall follow their lead. Tomorrow I will set up a university myself. There will be no students and no courses. It will never have any premises. It will, however, have a safe spaces policy and that policy will contain a ban preventing me or anyone related to me from ever speaking at one of its functions.
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