Get a life, everybody!

Today I’m coming out of the closet – if that is the appropriate phrase – as a curmudgeonly old fascist git.

We hear and read plenty these days about how “woke” the modern world has become (or is it just the Millennials, or even our “Generation X” youngsters as a group, that is being referred to?) – and/or how, after the best part of a year in lockdown, the UK population as a whole has gone slightly doolally.

I know I have.

Casting around overnight for an appropriate way to express how I feel, for some reason – and why not? – I alighted upon the 1976 movie Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky [winner, Best Original Screenplay Oscar], directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Peter Finch [posthumous winner, Best Actor Oscar], Faye Dunaway [winner, Best Actress Oscar], William Holden, Robert Duvall and Beatrice Straight [winner, Best Supporting Actress Oscar].

The backstory is that a US television network is suffering a ratings dive that represents an existential threat to its survival. Howard Beale, a veteran news anchor nearing retirement is told that he is going to be “let go” as one of their frantic measures designed to “up the network’s game” and, by improving ratings, also revitalise their financial position.

Naturally he’s not happy about it and – as one response – announces he might commit suicide on air.

And so to “cue the classic speech by Finch …”, the fine veteran British/Australian actor in his last movie role, playing Beale as he lets rip live on television about the state of the world in general:

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job.

The dollar buys a nickel’s worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.

We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’

Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone.

I want you to get mad! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street.

All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad.

You’ve got to say, ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!’

So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your windows, open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!’

Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!… You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!’

Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!“

And why am I giving this speech a salute this morning?

I’ll tell you.

Because of the controversies over firstly, whether care workers should be required to have the Covid-19 vaccination jab or not; and secondly, over whether the world should introduce Covid-19 vaccination passports or not.

To my mind, the issues are perfectly simple.

On the subject of care workers and a vaccination, forget all the flaffing around on the subject of an individual’s “human right” not to be forced to have a vaccination if they don’t want one – the push-back to the notion that vaccination should be compulsory for care workers.

I’ll grant every care worker that right.

However, these are extreme times and sometimes they require extreme measures. It’s quite simple – if any care worker decides not to have the jab, fair enough.

But if they don’t, they shouldn’t be allowed to work in ‘secure’ care/retirement homes.

End of message.

The argument that someone can decline to have a jab but retain the right to work in a care home – thereby putting themselves and everyone else involved at risk – is akin to someone claiming that being told they cannot act for a defendant in the UK Supreme Court because they have no legal training, or indeed that they are not going to be selected for the Manchester City first team squad in the European Cup Final just because they’re useless at football, is a denial of their basic “human rights”.

Secondly, if “the world” decides that the best way of getting the global travel industry off its knees is to introduce some form of “vaccination passport” – and anyone then declines to have one – again, that’s absolutely fine and their right to choose.

However, in making that decision, the “as night follows day” flip-side is that they aren’t going to be allowed to travel overseas any time soon.

Some things are far too important to be left to “individual choice” – the only yardstick for human civilisation is, or should always be, “the greatest good for the greatest number”.

These “wokers” should get over it … and sign up.