Dear Readers,
Good afternoon and welcome to Off The Fence: a newsletter that usually arrives on Monday, but today is with you on a Tuesday, and a beautifully sunny Tuesday at that. Last week, we had a pleasing number of new subscribers to the quarterly print magazine, and we do encourage more of you to join the burgeoning band of paying fans at the very sensible price of £25 for the year, which allows us to keep this newsletter free-to-air and everything ticking over nicely.
The term ‘timely’ is used all too often in the media, but there really isn’t a more timely book than Oliver Bullough’s Butler to the World, How Britain Became the Servant of Tycoons, Tax Dodgers, Kleptocrats and Criminals. We’ve been lucky to receive a couple of copies prior to publication, and it offers an alternative, necessary narrative to how the country repurposed its economy post-Suez Crisis. If you like books where you learn a lot – which we certainly do – then we commend it to you wholeheartedly. A whole chapter has been excerpted by the Guardian today, and we will be bringing you a piece on a TF staffer’s own place in butlering Britain next week.
Hacked Off
Unfortunately, our Instagram account has been hacked by some obscenely low-rent grifter, who is now spamming friends, contributors and stockists with invitations to join their Bitcoin mining enterprise. We’re trying to wrestle back control of the ‘gram, and have sent a number of threatening emails to Facebook HQ advising that we are close – this close – to an old-fashioned News of the Screws-style investigation into Nick Clegg’s vaunted claims that he slept with ‘no less’ than 30 women. At the time of writing, we’re still waiting to hear back from the President for Global Affairs’ Office, so please do not reply to any messages sent from our IG account for the time being. If you’re on Instagram, we also recommend enabling two-factor authentication so you can avoid our present unfortunate situation.
The Divine Comedy
Back in the Before Times of February 2020, our fiction editor John Phipps wrote a pitch-perfect parody of Samuel Pepys’ diaries, but with the horny naval administrator suffering from the rather contemporary malady of iPhone addiction. There was also a COVID-themed follow-up a couple of months later, but then the whole idea was ruined by a Brexit-related Twitter parody account we won’t deign to name. Anyway, do give them a read if you’d like a cup of Tuesday afternoon cheer.
Anglican or Anglican’t?
The last few years have presented a unique opportunity for the Church of England to re-establish itself at the centre of spiritual life in the nation a subject on which our editor-at-large, Rev. Fergus Butler-Gallie, has written on before for The Fence, but now he’s looking at another side of things. For those interested in the current state of the Anglican workplace, he writes about an institution riven with infighting, bullying and poor leadership, so much so that a growing percentage of the clerical membership are now unionising to safeguard their employment rights.
In Case You Missed It
It’s International Women’s Day, and social media teams across the land are excited to tell you all about it. Gender Pay Gap Bot has spent the day quoting their bromides alongside the truth of their pay disparities. Do also check out this roundup of accounts who simply deleted their tweets afterward.
Intriguing inverted commas in its headline aside, Kaitlyn Tiffany’s The Ugly, Embarassing Spectacle of ‘Milling’ Around Online is a probing read.
The estimable Simon Akam, of Fences passim, talks leadership and logistics in A Surfeit of Rank.
Dr Kate Lister conducts a thorough survey of one of Britain’s great anecdotal phenomena: hedge porn.
Cristiano Lima tells the tale of Andy Parker, the father whose daughter’s murder was televised who has turned to an unexpected solution to the video’s proliferation: minting it as an NFT.
And Finally
It’s not been a good day for charming former Speaker, John Bercow. Or to give him his full honorific title after ten years occupying the highest office in the House of Commons, John Bercow. Westminster is currently pretending to react to what they all knew for most of that decade; that Bercow was ‘a serial liar and a bully’. The full report into his conduct can be read here.
Despite this, Bercow’s efforts to make a quick buck from the burgeoning online, novelty short video market are still very much present in the bizarre corner of the internet known as Cameo. Perhaps the most excruciating is his introduction video, where he touts for custom in his dining room, while wearing one of his trademark colourful ties. Bercow says, jocularly:
‘Unseemly conduct, ranting, barracking, heckling, chuntering from a sedentary position, or any form of unparliamentary language will not be tolerated in this house!’
All of those (with the possible exception of chuntering) are things he has been found guilty of in today’s report. In reports of his rants towards staff, the word ‘fuck’ appears a positively unparliamentary number of times.
He also claims he did his best to make the House of Commons ‘a more testing place’. At least he’s been proved successful in that, albeit only testing for the people who had to work there with him.
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It’s a short outing today, because we’ve spent the last 24 hours frantically trying to save a bloody social media account. We’ll be back next week with a spicier offering and the announcement of a very exciting collaboration. Until then.
All the best,
TF
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