From the Stage pages of the Guardian, a reminder of which concerns – and by extension which citizens – simply don’t matter:

As if the issue weren’t already foremost in a great many minds, perhaps due to unhappy first-hand experience. Note, too, the conflation of migrants and refugees. As if those arriving in vast numbers, welcome or otherwise, legally or not, were some homogenous mass of human sorrow, and thus, rather conveniently, impossible to refuse.

Readers are welcome to marvel at the conceit that objections to current policy – an effectively borderless nation – can only be the result of ignorance. No other possibilities being conceivable, it seems. And so, the flow of information, of views to be considered, and any expectations of listening, seem likely to travel in one direction only.

Readers will also note the assumption that the indigenous proletariat – those low-status citizens daring to be angry at the downgrading of their home – merely need to have their objections corrected. By drama of a very particular kind. As if concerns regarding rapid demographic transformation and a loss of cultural common ground could only ever be wrong.

As if there were no substance to their fears. No basis for their anger or sense of betrayal. As if it weren’t their neighbourhoods, not those of the luvvie set, being transformed rapidly and against their will – and very often for the worse.

As if they simply have to be told in a slightly different way.

A curious definition of an issue being opened up.

Whether our award-winning actor would be quite so enthusiastic about a compelling drama conveying the “emotional story” and “day-to-day realities” of someone whose home has been degraded and made alienating by the assumptions of people much like Mr Pryce remains unclear.

Though readers are welcome to guess.

Update, via the comments:

EmC adds,

Indeed. It’s not as if feelings on the matter have not been made clear, many times, quite loudly. Governments have been ousted because of this issue. And it’s not as if the consequences of ignoring those feelings are particularly difficult to foresee. Yet somehow the option of just doing as you’ve been told doesn’t appear on the form.

Mr Pryce and his peers seem to imagine that they live in a society without practical limits, or any troublesome human nature, as if the patience of those on whom these demographic fantasies are being imposed were infinite. As if no ugliness could ensue.

The idea that there may be very real physical constraints on some favoured policy – that reality may not comply with half-baked theory – seems entirely alien to those who would lecture us on our ignorance.

Says Rafi,

The disconnect – the inability to read the room – is quite something. And so very Guardian.

It scarcely needs saying that Mr Pryce, like so many of his likeminded peers, is unlikely to find his own neighbourhood enlivened by Congolese and Somali borra gangs, whose modes of expression involve machetes, a tool now fashionable in educational establishments, and I doubt that he’ll find his own doorstep literally being shat on.

And I think we can assume that Mr Pryce has no recent first-hand experience of public transport and the, shall we say, challenges it can now present.

Likewise, I think it’s safe to say that Mr Pryce has not had the experience of visiting a busy high-street optician and realising that he was the only white customer, the only one fluent in English, and the only one paying for their treatment. Now, you might think that people shouldn’t notice such things or draw any conclusions from them, because that would be beastly and mean or something.

But people will, and people do, and wishing otherwise is both immaterial and perverse.

The irony being that those like Mr Pryce, who wish to project an air of piety and kindness, of infinite caring – entirely at others’ expense and while in reality disdaining their own countrymen – are risking a society much less to their own liking. And possibly yours.

A multicultural, multiracial society very much depends on the host population not feeling too imposed upon. The natives must feel respected and secure, not – as is now the case – that the piss is being taken. If the percentage of newcomers rises too high, or too sharply, or with no regard for assimilation and cultural common ground, friction will ensue and rapidly escalate.

The rate at which new arrivals materialise, their sheer numbers, will have an effect on how well, or how poorly, those new arrivals adapt to the customs and values of the host society. Indeed, it will have an effect on whether those new arrivals feel inclined, or obliged, to make any such attempt.

And at the moment we’re way past the point at which the alarm started flashing. And the longer that friction continues, and the more that the concerns of the natives are dismissed or denounced or made taboo, the uglier the pushback is likely to be.

Again,

And so, we arrive at the claim that a suitably loaded drama, a fiction, about refugees “could defuse anti-migrant anger,” because “people aren’t aware of the facts and realities for people living in migrant hotels.” As if that would outweigh all of the things, seen daily, that we’re not supposed to consider. Or consider important. Things regarding which one might have an opinion.

As Rmok and others note in the comments, what Mr Pryce advocates does seem very much about putting a thumb on the scale. As revealed by the implied disregard for indigenous objections – the assumption that objections to being swamped with the flotsam of the world, or suddenly being reduced to a racial and cultural minority in one’s own neighbourhood or village, one’s own home, is something to be educated out of you.

By your betters and their stories.

Lifted from the comments, via pst314:

Ms Watson, now not so young herself, tells us,

The specifics of this pressure, allegedly pervasive, overpowering and entirely social in nature, are unclear. No examples are forthcoming. The physical realities of reproduction are, however, less mysterious.

The idea that Ms Watson, or likely anyone she knows, any of her multi-millionaire celebrity peers, is being pressured by others, by a brutal society, to get married and presumably have children – and that such hypothetical pressure constitutes “violence” – is, shall we say, difficult to believe.

It seems rather more likely that Ms Watson, 35, is, like many of her self-involved peers, struggling to process her own age-related anxieties. At 35, that fertility window is closing quite rapidly and options that have perhaps been taken for granted, or deferred as insufficiently fashionable, will soon expire.

As someone quips in reply,

Update, via the comments:

EmC adds,

Well, quite. I don’t follow these things closely, but my impression is that there’s a class dynamic in play. That, for some, getting married and having children during the window of optimal viability is now considered low-status, proletarian, somewhat déclassé, especially among women with progressive leanings.

As if this time were obviously better spent pursuing a statusful career and asserting some womanly empowerment, or, in Ms Watson’s case, indulging in activism of a faintly ludicrous kind, claiming to be “self-partnered” rather than single, and insisting that bewigged men are somehow women.

My impression of any social pressure, any class convention, is that it goes in a different direction to the one being claimed. At least among ladies of Ms Watson’s political persuasion. Readers may wish to speculate as to whether childlessness and middle-aged regret will also, in short order, be deemed “violence” and something to complain about during celebrity interviews.

And for some reason, this came to mind:

Something about the dynamic, perhaps.

In politically-charged fashion news:

Why yes, since you ask, I am reading the Guardian. Specifically, a piece by Mr Phineas Harper:

Possibly because it tends to look contrived and rather silly, even when celebrities do it. A contrivance that suggests, not so much a high-minded “dismantling” of “gendered fashion,” or “a small step towards gender equality,” as Mr Harper would have us believe, but something closer to tedious self-absorption. The kind of thing one might expect from a disingenuous, noodle-legged Guardian columnist, say. But apparently, this craving for attention, for being the skirt-wearing star of any social gathering, will somehow liberate British women from their supposedly grim, downtrodden existence.

Those of you with an urge to behold Mr Harper in a skirt – complete with tights, trainers, and dickie bow – can do so here. A second ensemble, featuring a bold leaf print, also awaits your applause. Readers are welcome to say whether the word panache – favoured by Mr Harper – is one that comes to mind. Though it occurs to me that the author’s own carefully curated fashion statements rather solve any mystery as to why said garment hasn’t been widely adopted by the menfolk of the nation.

Despite this setback, further attempts are made to entice male Guardian readers into the realm of “floaty Toast midi skirt combos,” including:

Because every man, in every household across these islands, wants to be complimented on his skirt.

And,

Or perhaps the thing being signalled is something else entirely. Like insufferable twattery.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course:

Jennifer Lawrence confirms bint status.

Apparently, hugely popular films of the last fifty years aren’t Ms Lawrence’s area of expertise. Still, there’s something almost charming about an attempt to publicly self-inflate having such a different – and seemingly unforeseen – effect.

We’ve neglected the arts of late. That simply won’t do:

“Trees are like human beings,” says the performance artist Marina Abramovic. “They have intelligence. They have feelings. They communicate with each other. And also, they are perfectly silent listeners. You can complain to them.” And letting out your frustrations about a dire 2020 to a tree is exactly the advice the artist is giving the public.

Ah, the practical and the profound, together at last.

The participatory performance Complain to a Tree is the latest addition to the “Abramovic Method”—a series of exercises developed by the artist for practicing being present—which she will reveal on a new Sky Arts programme. Abramovic is taking over the TV channel for five hours on 5 December, to teach audiences about performance art.

At which point, regulars of this parish may feel a little superior, more culturally elevated, given their familiarity with said artistic form.

But back to the humanoid trees:

Don’t immediately hug the tree.

No, of course. That would be foolish.

Just feel the energy of the tree. Even not touching it but just holding your hands a little bit above.

Much better.

And then complain your heart into it. This is the whole idea.

The entirety, one might say. The total vastness of the idea.