The Critical Commentator

  Oblivion conquering Fame Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) Photo Credit: Birmingham Museums Trust [CCO]  ...What is most notable is that this instant outpouring of media praise for the Queen's traditional virtues comes amid a contemporary culture that elevates daily, even hourly, a value system of self-regard, self-promotion, changeability, acting out and anything-goes behaviour that is the polar opposite of Queen Elizabeth's. The celebration of the Queen's traditional values suggests an unexpected recognition of the extreme artificiality of our now dominant culture... "Influencer" is the defining word for our times. An influencer's success depends overwhelmingly on one thing: self-promotion accomplished by rising in the hot-air balloons of Instagram, TikTok and other social media. The goal is to marry marketing with fame. Because influencers do it, millions of others, often young women, make preoccupation with themselves the one habit that directs their lives....

  The Wreckers George Morland (1763-1804) Photo Credit: Nottingham City Museums & Galleries [CC BY-NC] The super-rich are not worrying about their heating bills. Or taxes. Or indeed anything much. Like France's pre-revolutionary aristocracy, their gilded lifestyle is untouched by the mundane concerns that so burden us economic serfs. Their courtiers - our wiliest bankers, lawyers and accountants, along with a slew of grifters and fixers - are lucratively employed keeping things that way. It is these enablers who create the tax-proof offshore structures, the anonymous shell companies and the opaque trusts that shelter the fortunes and identities of the extremely wealthy. They fend off any attempts by our fragmented, underfunded law enforcement agencies and regulators to penetrate these defences. They bully critics into silence with libel writs or contrived lawsuits based on data-privacy breaches. The result is that, according to the National Crime Agency, £100 billion in dirty m...