As a longstanding supporter of ancient over modern in the architecture stakes, it can only grieve me to see the front wall of King’s College, Cambridge defaced by the orange paint of Just Stop Oil. But that’s what happened to a ten-metre stretch of stone wall near the porters’ lodge yesterday.
I left those very hallowed portals more than a quarter of a century ago. In my day, a similar attack was carried out on the college by visitors from the Polytechnic of North London who had been invited to an event by chi-chi socialists in the King’s student body. Back then, King’s was the home of radical chic, while ‘PNL’ was the leftist real deal and its students no-doubt rejoiced on the way back down the M11 at having put one over on their over-privileged hosts.
This week’s suspected miscreant was swiftly arrested – a pink-trousered, poodle haired person whose gender it would be hazardous to guess. One could say there was a distinct resemblance to a young Brian May, but equally to a young Anita Dobson. So we must await confirmation of pronouns.
Were I ‘in charge’, as bar-room prophets are wont to say, I’d bring back the stocks for people like the Cambridge dauber
No doubt the incident will have set off earnest discussions among King’s undergraduates, who remain by repute some of the most left-wing in the whole of Cambridge. Was the protest justified on grounds of the ‘climate emergency’ facing the world? Or did it just amount to trite and cliched attention-seeking by an egotistical oaf?
One hopes the latter view will predominate. After all, the sheer midwittery involved in inflicting criminal damage in such a formulaic way on something so lovely should surely not hold much appeal to anyone with a first-rate mind.
Were I ‘in charge’, as bar-room prophets are wont to say, I’d bring back the stocks for people like the Cambridge dauber and the prodigiously self-important young chap who threw glitter over Keir Starmer on Tuesday too.
They pose no major threat to anyone and do not merit imprisonment, not least on grounds of the cost that would impose on taxpayers. And yet their actions are socially transgressive and worthy of stigma and punishment. A stint acting as a target for throwers of rotten tomatoes and other organic matter would be just the job.
Within hours of the attack at King’s, two members of the college staff could be seen setting about the long job of scrubbing paint off the walls: squat men reminiscent of David Jason in the TV adaptation of Porterhouse Blue. Regular guys earning an honest living and no doubt lacking the conceit to imagine there could be a justification for engaging in wanton vandalism. In Cambridge it has always been the working classes who keep the show on the road.
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