I can understand those who walk away from bodies like the National Trust once it become woke, yet when these things happen there is rarely enough of an exodus to drag the organisation back to reality. Sadly, there are enough of the hard-of-thinking and blue-pilled to keep the thing going for many years regardless, and in some cases the failure of the organisation may be a price not worth paying. If we wish to effect a rescue of such bodies we must use the same entryist tactics that allowed the Leftists to take over the organisation in the first place. Not that I blame the leavers – Dunkirk was as important a part of the story of the continent’s liberation as D-Day, and at some point we must return to recover the occupied territories, helped by the resistance movements that stayed behind.
Now, back to the dear old National Trust. The board of the NT is made up of 36 members. Half are appointed by other bodies – those bodies are themselves elected by members every six years (the last time being in 2018). The other 18 board members serve three year terms and so you don’t have to have aced Monday Maffs to work out that this means there are normally six vacancies every year.
There is a nominations committee which ‘manages’ the process and makes recommendations based on who they feel best offers the right mix of skills and experience and wokeness.
So on to the candidates for 2019, and there are a whopping 43 this year. Let’s start our sifting process shall we?
First we will naturally filter out all those blathering on about diversity. This culls:
- the candidate who also seemed to have swallowed a common purpose textbook (“I influence and partner government… stakeholder engagement … inclusivity of events”)
- another who thinks the Trust should appeal to more ‘diverse communities’. Time to remove the skinheads from the admission gates I suppose.
- the candidate with a 15 year career in the arts and cultural sector who, unsurprisingly, was “a passionate advocate for diversity”
- another one who believed that they should be “encouraging people from diverse backgrounds” (*sigh*)
- one who believes the “Trust needs to be able to diversify the people they get in” (get lost wypipo, we don’t want your un-diverse money!), and
- the keen NUS officer who has “significant knowledge of inclusivity”… but very little else I suspect. They’ll be in the shadow cabinet in six years, mark my words.
The summit of peak wokeness is now in sight, with a former LibDem councillor who boasts of being awarded both the Certificate of Excellence for the UK National Diversity Champion (sic) and being a recipient of the “Rev Jesse Jackson Prize (Breaking Down Barriers in the Community)”. Planting the rainbow flag on the headiest heights of Mt. Leftard, however, was the founder of the Pride in London event, who brags about his significantly “increasing the diversity of volunteers, and recruiting people based on their skin colour including more BAME”.
Next, we root out the followers of St. Greta and the Church of Climastrology. This is a little trickier; someone may declare themselves concerned about the environment – and the NT does look after millions of acres of it – but this can range from the reasonable view of not dumping crap in the rivers, to the fully-fledged eco-fascist, so we have to employ some guesswork and gut instinct. Thus into the round filing cabinet goes anyone directly mentioning climate change, as well as:
- the masters degree holder in “Environment, Policy and Society”
- the numpty who thinks families should make their way to far flung manor houses in travel modes “other than the private car”
- the southern incomer in Cumbria emoting about “this beautiful planet of ours” (presumably to counter anyone suspecting that she regarded it as a fugly ball of rock).
Anyone mentioning sustainability, except in a possible financial context, was also dropped – it’s the only way to be sure.
Who’s next for the chop? Ah, yes, the quango and non-productive sector careerists. By happy and predictable coincidence, through our machinations above, these individuals have already been pushed through the cargo door of judgement to face the 10,000 feet drop of justice. We’ll throw out the lifelong council manager too though just for good measure.
Oh, and during all this we’ve said goodbye to a Conservative councillor who nevertheless thought it worthwhile to mention his ‘multi-cultural background’. A true conservative would not have even bothered mentioning this irrelevant fact.
Fellow puffins will be entirely unsurprised that, even though we have only rooted out around half the field so far, five of the nomination committee’s six anointed candidates were included in the above. The sixth we will now also drop, just to be sure.
Now we’re down to those with inoffensive summaries, so it’s time to be positive. Let’s have anyone with substantial experience in the private sector; hello to the “20 years with BP” (Bartholomew), the engineer (Morris), the timber importer (Ellis) and property dealer (Parry). There is also one candidate who positively stands out for the right reasons – the one who states:
“I want the Trust … not to air-brush parts of the history of the country houses, or re-write the narrative when the realities of history doesn’t fit what feels right today – the past is a foreign country where they did things differently! We may, and should not agree with it but we mustn’t ignore it.”
That doesn’t sound very woke, so Mr Powles gets my vote.
Finally, we need a sixth candidate. There are two who are re-standing for election but have not made the nominations committee’s recommendations list. Naturally we have to wonder why. They’ve attended every meeting during their term, so it can’t be a lack of commitment. Given the politically correct approach of that committee, anyone who has been thus rejected must have something going for them – perhaps they are boat-rockers or just not as woke as the favoured new boys and girls. Having served on similar committees and trustee boards myself I have learned that the pains-in-the-arse do sometimes have a point. In any case, as a rule of thumb anyone rocking the leftist boat is in the running for my vote. It could be, of course, that they genuinely just weren’t very good; but as any observer of politics will have learned, incompetence is never an obstacle for followers of the leftist hive-mind; cock-ups are forgiven and so these two wouldn’t now be facing the chop. That they have means they are still worthy of our vote. Now despite this it so happens that one of these I have already ruled out above, so our vote should go to Ms Whitehouse.
How you use your vote is your business of course, but block voting is more effective. My own votes go to (in their order on the ballot): Ellis, Parry, Powles, Bartholomew, Morris, Whitehouse.
There is also a members’ resolution at the AGM to stop using Cadbury’s chocolate for the Easter Egg hunts because Cadbury’s uses palm oil which makes St. Greta very cross or something. I’m voting against, naturally, though oddly this is in line with the board’s recommendation. Hmmm….
© Vir Cantium 2019
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