We are sick of being told what to do, says Freddie Forsyth – Express.co.uk

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During the 1960s such a revolution took place in social and sexual attitudes that the decade will always remain the Swinging Sixties.

After it, nothing was ever quite the same again. Huge swathes of bigotry were swept away. Some good traditions also went but the overall effect was to give us a fairer and more tolerant society. But seen from 50 years later, it was a decade of noisy revolt.

I suspect we are now going through an era of quiet insurrection. Lord Heseltine has announced he will in his dotage lead a campaign to destroy Brexit (if he can) and restore the age of national subordination to the One-Europe dream under nonelective government to which he and others have dedicated their lives. He and his peers (in every sense) are needless to say very elderly now.

Clearly there are some working people who support the Euro-Federal dream.

But the fanatics are the ones we see dominating the headlines and hardly one has ever done a hands turn of manual work in their lives.

Broadly, I call them all the luvvies and they are outraged at being contradicted by us proles. The attitude of the Remoaners after that devastating referendum of June last year is of uncontained outrage.

Pro-EU measure after measure was passed into law without a vote and that was all right.

Then finally the people were allowed to speak and, according to Lord H and his mates, we said the wrong thing.

Now their version of events is that we all turned xenophobic, anti-European, chauvinist, nationalist, populist, even neo-fascist. But we havent.

They have the chicken-and-egg sequence the wrong way round. Every society, across the ages and the longitudes, has had two components, one large and one small.

The large one is the broad masses of the people (the BMP) and the tiny one an amalgam of vested interests called the elite, or the establishment.

In a healthy society the establishment treats the BMP with respect. This is wise. It prevents insurrections and bloody revolutions such as the French or Russian versions.

In return the BMP treats the establishment with trust. When that breaks down, national dissatis faction ensues.

The people become surly, the elite fearful and defensive. What has happened here, which Lord Heseltine cannot understand, is that the socalled great and good are not trusted any more. They have lied to us too many times.

The luvvies may demonstrate, noisily screaming with their placards and headlines, but the BMP has quietly used its only weapon the vote after all those years.

Standing alone in all those voting booths, pencil poised, we did not turn anti-foreigner or anti-world. We just asked: What do those lying so-and-sos want us to do?

Well, we will bleeding well vote the opposite. So out went the Old Etonian, in came the vicars daughter.

Out went call me Dave and in came Prime Minister will do nicely. If Lord Heseltine and his cronies think they can order us about any more, they may be heading not for the abolition of the Lords but its root and branch reform.

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It was done in 1999 when the 750 hereditary peers were culled down to 92 and it can be done again with 700 created peers reduced by internal vote to 300.

Lord H should become aware we are not in a subservient mood any longer. Perhaps our time will later be called the age of insurrection. We want our country back; from Brussels and from him.

TOO traumatised by the shambles at the Oscars I switched my attention to the stars that the ceremony always attracts.

It was quickly noticeable that for many the theme was to emulate the glamour of the celebrities of yesteryear.

Particularly successful was model Karlie Kloss (no, me neither) who was a ringer for Sophia Loren circa 1960.

My mind went back to the time when her pout and cleavage adorned the inside of my locker during National Service 60 years ago. Balmy days!

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ANALYSTS who study these things have now estimated that Vladimir Putin is worth a truly staggering 160billion (yes, billion), making him far and away the richest man in the world.

Given that he has never had a salary more than that paid to the president or prime minister of Russia there appears to be a slight mathematical problem here.

It is no secret that all dictators make themselves immensely rich by scalping their own countries economies but 160billion is abusing the privilege. Nor is it just one man.

The whole Kremlin machine is so mired in corruption that not a single business deal or government contract goes through without the machine taking its cut.

But there is a price to pay for such institutionalised corruption. When oil and gas prices were going through the roof, there was money to burn so glorious promises of jam tomorrow could be made to the Russian people. But that was then, this is now.

Despite constant military provocations in the Baltic, English Channel and Middle East the Russian economy is creaking like a barn door.

The ordinary Russian just soldiers on in poverty. Lucky old Vladimir to have such a docile and donkey-patient populace.

MUCH of the country was consumed last weekend by the annual Oscars ceremony a saturnalia of mutual and self-adoration.

Those mystified by the term La La Land had to watch only for a few minutes. When you think about it, acting is a very odd profession.

There are only two jobs in the world where the protagonist will say absolutely anything if paid to do so. One is that of lawyer but that is not a loved profession.

A barrister in court will do all he can to send a man he knows privately is innocent to jail or to set at liberty one he knows is guilty as hell.

It is his job but he does not have columns of fans clamouring for his autograph afterwards. Then again, there are only two callings in which the practitioner tries to persuade you he is someone he is not.

One is actor, the other is conman. The latter is caught and jailed.

The former is given statuettes. What is fair about that?

MORE than half of the Lords think they have the right to amend the Bill that will authorise the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50.

It is what the upper house is there for, we are told. But do they really have that right? Every Bill coming up from the Commons is the policy of the incumbent government which is a political party.

Such legislation is indeed susceptible to emendation under the constitution.

But this Bill is the first in history that is not the product of a political party, with which their lordships have the right to agree or disagree.

This Bill derives from the verdict of the entire British people.

(The 1975 referendum advocated no change, so there was no Bill to enact its finding. Hence fi rst time in all our long history.) This Bill alone is not a party political decision. It is the voice of the British people. The Lords should leave it alone.

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LIFE is rarely fair. A plump goalkeeper is fired for eating a meat pie on camera during a game.

It seems the club was offended that those who had bet he would do so won some money. Surely the pie company now owes him a supply of the product as compensation.

If he thus gets any larger, he might be restored because his enlarged frame will fi ll the entire goalmouth.

Not their right

MORE than half of the Lords think they have the right to amend the Bill that will authorise the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50.

It is what the upper house is there for, we are told. But do they really have that right? Every Bill coming up from the Commons is the policy of the incumbent government which is a political party.

Such legislation is indeed susceptible to emendation under the constitution. But this Bill is the first in history that is not the product of a political party, with which their lordships have the right to agree or disagree.

This Bill derives from the verdict of the entire British people. (The 1975 referendum advocated no change, so there was no Bill to enact its finding.

Hence first time in all our long history.) This Bill alone is not a party political decision. It is the voice of the British people. The Lords should leave it alone.

AN ELDERLY lady in my village needs help around the house and employs a cleaner from Romania.

This young girl experienced severe pain from her sinuses. She went to our NHS, which she was perfectly entitled to do as she pays income tax and national insurance.

They would be delighted to treat her but sometime next year. So she motored across Europe to her home in Bucharest and was treated by a specialist within a week.

Then she motored back. I have the impression something has gone wrong. This was not what Nye Bevan envisaged.

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We are sick of being told what to do, says Freddie Forsyth - Express.co.uk