Substack diary no. 140: Friday, 1st. May 2026

The almost complete lack of noise today is Covid-like; a lockdown silence where human sounds are notable by their almost complete absence. Even nature is quiet this morning, with almost no breeze and a dull grey sky with no hint of precipitation. A car pulls into the cul-de-sac. I hear a creaky wardrobe door being opened next door. I strain to hear anything else – there is nothing. The clatter of pigeon claws on the roof above me. Why so quiet?

Well, to those of us of a certain age today is May Day, where workers meet to rail against injustice and exploitation, or to celebrate the occasional victory. Having been demonised for decades by the media, most of which is owned or covertly influenced by the British Establishment, May Day has been consigned to a dustbin marked ‘history best forgotten’. Today is not a Bank Holiday. Monday is a Bank Holiday, and the May Day of old has been erased and replaced with Early May Bank Holiday. How brutally unimaginative and shallow.

So why so quiet? I have no idea. Perhaps it is simply the beginning of Bank Holiday Weekend and a lot of workers have decided they rather like the idea of the occasional 4-day weekend. And why not? Workers are under attack like never before and often, sadly, from Emperors with no clothes who are pretending to be something they are not. And, even more sadly, a multitude of workers are falling for the fog of Orwellian lies disguised as sound-bite logic. So much so that a political party of and for the British Establishment have somehow duped them into believing they are anti-establishment. This is turkey’s voting for Christmas and lemmings voting for an increase in the number and height of cliffs. What exactly is it they want to Reform, other than to remove barriers to the growth of the already staggering wealth and power of their chums in the Establishment?