The insane story, quoted from a news source::
The Fitzwilliam Museum has suggested that paintings of the British countryside evoke dark “nationalist feelings.” The museum, owned by the University of Cambridge, has undertaken an overhaul of its displays… The new signage states that pictures of “rolling English hills” can stir feelings of “pride towards a homeland”… with “the implication that only those with a historical tie to the land have a right to belong.”
I liked this article on the insanity, which moves from the obvious criticism to a possible motive, which is actually rational because money:
It’s worth noting that the museum apparently had its annual Arts Council funding reduced – from £1.2M to £637K – on grounds that the institution “hadn’t fulfilled its targets of diversifying its audience.” Hence, one assumes, the new signage, the fretting about “representation,” and the stern moral warnings about “nationalist feelings.”
From the comments one person suggests that using press gangs to get the “diversifying” correct: good enough for the 17th century Royal Navy, good enough for the Fitzwilliam Museum). The article’s author responds:
Which isn’t entirely out of step with the general air of farce. The supposedly corrective fretting starts with a dubious, arbitrary assumption – that all racial groups should be visiting the museum in some given ratio, even though they choose not to. Those doing the fretting then set about insulting the people who do visit the museum by claiming that the things they have travelled to see, and with which they may feel some affinity, may result in “dark… nationalist feelings” and other unspeakable beastliness. By liking landscape paintings, they risk moral corruption.
We are ruled by rational yet insane people. In other words they have insane goals for us but use entirely rational means to achieve them.
No Minister 