Comments by "Ash Roskell" (@ashroskell) on "Professor Tim Wilson"
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Well, OF COURSE there’s SOMETHING going on that just ain’t right. We just don’t know what . . . yet. My first thoughts, honestly, (though they do me little credit) were that Owen is either one of three things:
1) A former squeeze?
2) Another Russian Spook?
3) Someone with compromat on Johnson, possibly connected to either of the above speculations, or perhaps something else?
The idea that she might have been his, “love child,” hadn’t occurred to me at first, I’m sorry to say. I mean, who in Westminster (outside of the opposite benches) hasn’t had to contend with Johnson’s johnson?
The idea that holds the most water for me is that she has something on him and is working for Russia, either directly or indirectly. I just hope to GOD that someone investigates this case thoroughly and gets to the, “bottom,” of it!
I would caution that absence of evidence (at this point) is NOT evidence of absence. It may well transpire.
But anyway, I do appreciate the larfs. Your Kenneth Williams is so good it should be bottled and sold!
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I think people, including Prof Wilson here, are leaping to conclusions without seeing the potential for a bigger picture, let alone looking at it. Labour made a manifesto promise, to go after the traffickers. How do you go about that, if not by rounding up a whole bunch of people who use exploitative labour, isolating them simultaneously and squeezing them for their connections? You work your way up the chain. Why is anyone assuming this operation is, “one week,” long? And, does anyone seriously think that Yvette Cooper cooked up a plan, put on a flack jacket, rounded up her A Team and started kicking in doors? Or, do you think, perhaps, she asked the police to present proposals for getting to the traffickers, as promised, and signed off on THEIR plan, which THEY are executing in the hopes of doing some good with more than a one week shelf life?
Better this than using their victims as a political football? As to legislation, Parliament is not even in session, so shall we wait and SEE what they plan to do, before laying accusations of myopia on their doorstep?
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Please could you give me a reference to look this story up? Regrettably, I missed it completely. I would very much like to know what this head teacher is saying and how he explains his rebellion? It is a bold and brave thing to do, regardless of his reasoning, right or wrong.
Prima facia I stand with him. Though I too recognise the enormous importance of memorialising those among us who make the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us, it seems fairly plain that even the over-propagandised Russians know that their cause is unjust, their methods brutal and their sacrifice too great for the sake of a tiny oligarchy’s ambitions, flinging all of the laws of diplomacy and war into the teeth of an outraged democratic world.
Usually, when one person bravely takes a stand like this, they are merely expressing what everyone about them is thinking and feeling. And, if I had to guess, I would bet real money that this educator is not unwilling to memorialise the fallen soldier, as he is to accept the propaganda that they propose to hedge about his plaque? He will argue that it is the war he is opposing, not the boy.
And that is a dilemma, which I am sure he must be feeling keenly. He may even feel that he is sacrificing his own future, liberty and possibly more, for the sake of that soldier as much as for his community. He does not have the luxury of distance that we do, knowing his actions must have an impact and that his time has come (presumably?) for this gesture. It will be easy for the Russian state to mobilise arguments similar to the one you expressed.
But, for me at least, it does not take a great leap of the imagination to picture a head teacher who once knew this boy, knew his values, his hopes and dreams, his anxieties and fears, and perhaps is in a position to know that the person who would be most offended by a memorial of this type would be that boy himself?
And that is just one of so many scenarios that leap to my overactive writer’s mind (“an imagination trained to misbehave,” as Stephen King once put it) that may fully justify this head teacher in a more personal, moral stance than we see on the face of it?
That is why I would very much like to know where this story came from, read it myself and maybe use the search terms to find other journalistic takes on the situation? Such matters are close to my heart too.
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You touched on, and then passed by, the biggest problem in your opening remarks. Setting aside the attacks and the attacker just to comment on that: The rumours and disinformation. As you said, they will be all over the press by morning. There was a time when the leading press outlets would refer to the fact that there are rumours out there and pointedly state that they would not repeat what any of them say, as you indeed did. You display a high standard that we used to be able to expect from the BBC and other leading outlets. Now, we know that these rumours will occupy more column inches than the actual story.
You asked the right question, “Do we have a right,” to hear all the bollox that will be spread by the cruel, the craven, the insane and the viscous. My answer is yes we do, but we also should expect responsible news outlets ignore them all. We don’t want to hear about them from such sources.
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I do think there is something wrong with a culture that takes the, “official complaint,” as the first line of response to a problem rather than simply speaking to the person responsible. The man in question gave an eminently reasonable response and I think people should have their complaints summarily dismissed unless they can evidence their own attempts to approach the person in question to seek a remedy. We need to foster a culture of cooperation and community. And to foster a society that judges the official complaint as a form of failure in itself. Unless you are elderly and infirm, or in some other way disabled and have no one to act on your behalf, why do we feel we have the right to use up the precious resource of official time?
Of course the ice cream van is an import, as is the Christmas Tree, Halloween celebrations and countless other little joys that I recall as a part of the landscape of my childhood. So what? Why should that have any bearing? Should we ban American Halloween? German Christmas Trees? Or should we remember that little ray of sunshine that sparkled in our own childhoods when we heard the chimes of the ice cream van coming?
From your description, the ice cream vendor seems a harmless, polite man, plying his trade as best he can and keen to reach a resolution without bothering any, “officials.” We all know our rights, don’t we? How many of us know our responsibilities as well, and in such detail, as those rights?
I don’t doubt he did let his chimes play on too long, and would apologise and stop doing it, if he’d merely been asked. But no. Mr, or Ms, Angry had to reach for the phone or their keyboard and waste the time and resources of, “officialdom,” just to make a point. Presumably because peeing on all four corners of the street to mark out their territory has gone out of style? Phooey, to Mr or Ms Angry. The guy’s just trying to make a living. Who doesn’t love an ice cream van? Other than certain members of the Scottish Mafia, but that’s another tale altogether.
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Never has the expression, “You can’t polish a turd,” been more apt. Delusion and gaslighting just can’t cut it, even amongst the most, “loyal,” Tories. Braverman is gleeful, making her best play for leadership, which relies on the destruction of the current iteration of the Tories, so she’s as toxic as ever, but at least the people who created her are being forced to taste some of their own bitter brew.
For Sunack, who will leave for America after the election; who has nothing to lose in terms of real power (being a money man on Wall Street gives him more power than leading a political party, and he knows it) he only has his ego to protect now. And we should not underestimate the power of that. He sees the spectre of the worst Tory defeat since the war, possibly ever. And that makes him dangerous.
The American political wonks, who have their hooks deeply into our Tufton (sorry if I misspelled Tufton?) Street Tories, make public speeches in their country about the, “dangers of education,” and the Tories have actively taken up that message. They know it is only the uneducated who can be persuaded to vote against their own interests. Soon, teachers will be like doctors, only contactable by phone and social media, if we continue down this road.
Much as I admire your call for Sunack’s Dickensian, Damascene conversion toward even the obvious, let alone a legacy of doing SOME good before he leaves, I fear the reality will be far more like the Black Adder version of A Christmas Carol, in which he will lose all of his last inclinations toward kindness and reason and simply try to leave as insoluble a mess as possible. The reasoning being that he will hope that no incoming government will be able to fix our problems, which will provide him with legacy excuses.
If, “reason,” or rationality had ever been a factor in this government, we would not be where we are now. Instead of practical, rational, good faith policy making we’ve seen nothing but opposition baiting, emotive and emotional cruelty and victimising of the most helpless members of society. We’ve seen public services quite callously exploited, looted and eviscerated, from our water supply to health, policing and education. And now Sunack proposes doing away with National Insurance!?
It’s like he’s TRYING to alienate the last bastion of solid support he might have expected to count on! The elderly! Is he going to raise retirement to 75? It looks that way. Not that he’ll ever get the chance. But the Tories have emptied the public purse and are desperately scrambling to find ANY source of income that does NOT involve taking money from the very richest people in society or offending the client press’s sensibilities.
I don’t envy the next Labour government. I just hope that they would have the character and good sense to form a coalition, regardless of their numbers, so that we really can, “work together as a nation,” as you said, and put a PR system in place, whilst we solve the nation’s problems collectively. And I pray that includes some accountability for those callous criminal goons who ran the postal service’s scamming machines and ruined honest people’s lives.
Sorry for going on. That was not my intention. You really do get me thinking hard. People like you give me hope that not all is lost. Thank you, if you read all of this. And thank you anyway. Your service, this channel, is a jewel in YouTube’s crown.
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As to your broader commentary on the Afghan war, I find myself in agreement with almost all of what you said. Though I think it is important to note two things. Firstly, with regard to making the people who planned 911 regret taking part in that act of terrorism, and deterring nations and terror groups from contemplating further such acts, the invasion of Afghanistan was a 100% success. Ask any Afghani Taliban older than 30 if they think another atrocity along those lines would be worth carrying out? They would run a mile and, if they really thought you were seriously capable of doing it, they would probably eliminate you.
The second point is that Nation Building was the cardinal error of that campaign. That works in secular, developed countries, which is why it worked so well in Germany and Japan after WWII. But such a model had already been shown as impossible to implement in Iraq and the intractable issues surrounding the Middle East conflicts were also lessons ignored.
They never actually, “made progress,” of any kind. The allies tricked themselves into believing that, in the same way they tricked themselves into believing that Putin was a man we could do business with. The fact was that it was always going to be washed away unless the west committed to staying there permanently, which was something that was never on the cards.
Yet, once again, despite the fact that neither side comes out of that with anything but shame and disgrace, at least Biden’s administration is only guilty of misreading the situation and botching it. Trump’s is guilty of that too, but we must also add to that his wilful betrayal of America, releasing over a thousand KNOWN terrorists in one fell swoop, and inviting their bloody leaders to Camp David. An almost sacrilegious smearing of a national place of honour with his attempts at wheeler dealing with terrorist murderers. And all to no avail.
Unless you count the chaos to which trump deliberately added, which he saw as a win, because it, “looked bad,” for Biden? The cost in human lives never entered his thinking.
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As I’ve said before, allowing the ONLY man who has a vested interest in prolonging the conflict to remain in charge of that conflict and that country, was Israel’s fundamental mistake. They responded to terrorism with passion and outrage, setting aside the obvious consequences of an election cycle that would be underway by now, had all things remained equal.
For all concerned, Hamas’s desperate actions have harmed everyone’s interests including their own. Whether you’re Israeli or Palestinian, whether you’re elsewhere in the world, as Jewish citizens of America and other countries are finding, this latest iteration of the conflict has destabilised world affairs and hurt the interests of any who support freedoms and democracy, in innumerable ways, some not yet manifest, but sure to be.
And the only person to have benefitted from this is Benjamin Netanyahu. Collectively, we can say that Russia and Iran are direct, if minor, beneficiaries, as is China. But Netanyahu is the only individual for whom this state of affairs has been a GIFT!
Especially in the light of the legal ruling that has stymied his attempts to exempt himself from legal responsibilities for potentially criminal activities. He will have to answer those charges now. And he remains free for only so long as his country remains in this state of war. What do people EXPECT him to do? He is a sociopath.
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Corrections: David Tenant did NOT say that Badenoch, “should be silenced,” or anything even close to that. “I just wish she’d shut up,” is a personal desire, not a statement of intent, or a suggested mandate. That misinterpretation; misrepresentation matters! There is a gulf between what he said (and meant) and the words you are putting into his mouth. And how many people will take you at your (otherwise wholly reliable) word, without ever checking the clip for themselves?
And that, “medieval theology,” about true freedom that you referenced is actually Ancient Greek philosophy, repurposed by medieval thinkers and clerics, as so much of their work was.
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Agreed. At no point did Boris ever tell us, “Here is what you think.” But, wasn’t that what the whole, “Stop The Boats,” rubbish was about in the first place? I still, to this day, cannot find a single person who even asked for that policy or who sees it as important. Plenty who express horror and alarm at it, even among conservative voting friends. And when I ask them, they agree that it seemed to drop out of a clear blue sky!
Ipsos MORI polls consistently show that migration and asylum seekers are among the LOWEST priorities among voters! And the numbers don’t lie either. We take far fewer immigrants of any kind in the UK than all of our European counterparts!
It strikes me that Sunak and his other two brown skinned brown shirts (Priti Patel and Suella B) have been attempting social engineering with this notion since the start? Telling us we, “care,” about this, so as to sweep up the far right and the low level bigots along with the nose-holding conservatives faithful, all under one big tent? They have seen the Americanisation of politics as a future in which they will prosper. That’s my theory.
Stoking deliberate fear, division and anger (which always draws more attention on the internet than anything positive: there are comprehensive studies to show this, and platforms like Twitter have been exploiting the fact for over a decade now) are the way to command the greatest number of eyes on screens, ears to listen and, (who knows?) votes at the polling booths? It’s a cynical strategy, metastasised from within a morally bankrupt corporation, masquerading as a political party, calling itself, “The Conservatives.” An oxymoron if ever there was one.
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Navalny’s remains will be cremated before any independent scientific eyes are allowed to see it. Those people asking, “why,” you think Navalny was murdered are obviously either ignorant of world affairs or just sinister shills, asking in bad faith. There is no middle ground there.
As ever, Putin will be content with various opposing stories to come out. That’s how his system works. The truth is irrelevant. Only that there are many versions of it, which people will argue over until Russians shrug and say, “What’s the point? We’ll never know.”
The more relevant question is, “Why now?” And I suspect that is to do with the fact that Russia is holding their, “elections,” next month. The message to any potential pro-democracy candidates, anyone gathering up their courage, is clear: “This is what happens to my opponents.”
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Wait a minute? This, “week long crack down,” as you describe it, is actually the first step in getting to the people smugglers! It leads to getting the bastards who exploit these desperate people in the first place! There is FAR MORE than just display going on here. Just think about it? How DO you get the smugglers?
Labour did promise that they would go after the traffickers instead of all of this bullying of the migrants themselves, as the Tories prefer! The Home Office will have signed off on this operation, but it will have been the police who proposed them, not Yvette Cooper.
All of these business GOT their, “staff,” from somewhere, right? And if you round up a whole bunch of these receivers and exploiters in one go, so they cannot talk to each other, you work on them to get to their sources! You find out who their contacts are, and work your way up the chain! That’s precisely what they SHOULD be doing!
And is this Yvette Cooper, or a received response? Is this not the actions of the police? Somehow, I don’t picture Ms Cooper donning a flack jacket and kicking down doors? She merely signed off on a police action, presumably proposed BY the police, didn’t she?
Yes, we need changes in policy. But Parliament is not even in session, so GIVE THEM A CHANCE, for crying out loud!? I support the idea of better policy AND going after the evil traffickers AS PROMISED in Labour’s manifesto!
You seem to have made too many assumptions here that you cannot possibly be in a position to know? A habit formed from seeing our last government always doing as little as possible while shouting as much as possible, no doubt. But, I suspect this operation is intended to shake more intelligence out of the trees and get to those sods who need catching. And I say, wait and see BEFORE judging! They’ve barely had time to get their suspects into the station and you’re dismissing the whole thing as flannel? Why?
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Ah but, there’s you, speaking logically about the NHS and policing and poverty, applying common sense and problem solving suggestions. Where’s the profit margin in that? How do they get to hand out contracts for private security firms and private healthcare providers, transport companies, water companies and postal companies in order to get those generous campaign donations and assurances of, “consulting,” jobs once they’re all unceremoniously kicked out of Westminster, unless they deliberately sabotage the very infrastructure the country depends upon and create the vacuums in services that desperately need filling, to the point where even a left winger would accept privatisation over no post, no healthcare, no clean water, no law enforcement, no FOOD?
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If having languages were a basis for one country’s invasion of another, we all would have been more reluctant to attend our French or German lessons in school! Being able to speak a language doesn’t make that your first language, let alone your identity.
The irony about your Kremlin mouthpiece commenter, there, is that the very word, “Duma,” is an Old English word, meaning, “deliberation.” It comes to Russia via Germanic languages, wherein it meant, “thought.”
Therefore, let us use the Duma’s argument, shall we? We will henceforth consider the Duma German sovereignty, or British. And, to any Russian who complains, we can simply explain that we are merely living up to Russian, “ideology,” and acting upon their instigation.
Perhaps it is time the west invaded Russia anyway and put an end to all this Tsarist, 19th Century style imperialism, which threatens the world’s stability and be done with it? Putin is so fond of what he calls, “history,” and the rest of the world calls laughable, “revisionism,” that I feel sure he will understand that Russia has certainly provided us with the necessary pretext.
“Just playing it by your rules, Vlad,” we can say as the British Tiger tanks trundle through Red Square.
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Well, at least you have shone a light on much of the drama for me. I have been wondering why this apparent perfect storm of events in the life of one TV presenter has held the attention of the nation so much? I haven’t followed Schofield’s career since I was a child, and all of my memories of him and Gordon the Gopher are fond ones. That model of being the anchorman between children’s television shows was a stroke of genius that was copied around the world and recreated for adult audiences with creations like Roland Rat, for good or ill, you decide.
But, despite only ever seeing him when he cropped up on a YouTube video that their algorithm pointed me at, I have never seen any of his shows. I knew, obviously, that he and Holly Willoughby were television Royalty, and that the whole, “cue-gate,” scandal was a risible misunderstanding by the general public about how television works.
But all of these other issues, of which I’ve been vaguely aware in the last couple of weeks, just seem to have, “Private matters ripe for misrepresentation, incorrect assumption and darkly obtuse gutter press coverage,” written all over them.
As far as I still know, Philip Schofield has contributed hugely to the tone and culture of our country since his early years in television, which owes him a debt in that regard. He has always struck me as a kind, thoughtful, humorous, sincere man and a good influence on the public therefore. Until I am disabused of that notion, with concrete evidence, I will continue on in my belief, hoping he will return to the public in some other forum of equal popularity. Even though I’ve personally seen very little of him, I am smart enough to know that our culture is better off with people like him influencing it. So, I just hope we haven’t lost him, and that the scurrilous rumours about him are nothing more than that, gutter press rumouring.
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I no longer think of him as a, “Boris.” He’s a, “Johnson,” to me now. “Boris,” is almost affectionate and certainly familiar. Whatever face we think we see of him, Boris is an unknowable cypher, like any crook who turns out to be as concomitantly dangerous as was once powerful. He clearly wields a great deal of power still.
To hear people even countenance the view, “It would set a dangerous precedent,” to fully punish a politician for his degenerate disregard for the rules, and his subsequent lies and downplaying of his responsibility in that, appalls me almost as much as the parties themselves. It angers me in the way that it did when I saw that press secretary literally laughing out loud, when I had not been allowed anywhere near my father, who died of Covid which he caught in the hospital. It reignites the flame of revolutionary rage in my heart.
There are just too many things I want to say to that, but I’ll leave it at this: The most dangerous precedent was already set, when Johnson CRIMINALLY disregarded the law and partied while people DIED, as though he and his staff had nothing better to do.
Thank you for these videos. They’re a soothing balm to me. Just hearing people who, “get it,” speaking out, helps enormously. 👍
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“Mad,” Hancock and Jeremy (frequently mispronounced but well earned last name) Hunt, have gotten away Scott free with deliberate (DELIBERATE!) harm to the NHS and it wasn’t only the post Brexit migration of staff that caused its ruination. When will people FINALLY UNDERSTAND?! The decay of the NHS is NOT a bug! It’s a FEATURE!
They intend to run it into such a hopeless, and prohibitively expensive to repair, state that they can openly privatise the entire thing, whilst getting nothing but a gasp of relief from the continually waterboarded public who will be offered tax cuts in return for giving up on the whole project! That’s the PLAN!
And the stealth privatisation model (whilst working so well for some, far richer now, friends and family of the Tory MP’s responsible) has not moved swiftly enough for them! The complacent, arrogant Tories just didn’t expect that they would find themselves about to be punted out of office before the completion of their diabolical plan.
This will be our LAST opportunity to save the NHS (one of the last defining features of Britain still standing, of which we can claim some collective national pride!) and put in legal safeguards to protect it, enshrined in law, and actually criminalising any further attempts at insider dealing, stealth privatisation and deliberate sabotage! The new government will be our last, best hope. If they don’t act in the new Parliament, then it’s all over.
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I would take issue with one of your points there. This is far from the first time that Putin has showed his hand in this manner. I’m not speaking of Prigozhin either, as he was a, “legitimate target,” in the minds of Russians on both sides of the pro or anti democratic fence.
But, Putin has been murdering people rather routinely, at home and abroad. He murdered a popular, well known journalist in front of the Kremlin. Had her shot in the back of the head to make his point. To put that in terms we can really identify with, imagine it’s the following week after the infamous Prince Andrew interview over the Epstein affair. In front of Buckingham Palace the body of Emily Maitliss is found with a single gunshot wound to the back of her head. By the following day, the press reveals that all clues as to the identity of the killer lead back to MI5. Then . . . radio silence. No more press coverage. No closure. Nothing.
Imagine the impact that would have on the British people? With rumours swirling about other journalists who attempted to cover the story who got fired. Krishnan Guru-Murthy is, “let go,” from Channel 4 with no reason given to the public, but internet chatter suggesting he was upset about the death of Maitliss and wanted to do a follow up story. He is never available for comment and has closed his Twitter account.
That paranoia and unease that everyone would be going through is just the start of the deliberate fear and loathing that Putin wants his people to feel. Yet the list of his most famous and infamous victims, at home and abroad, is now larger than Stalin’s.
I think you could be right that this straw could break the camel’s back. After all, we none of us predicted the fall of communism in Russia. Nor did the world, by all accounts, foresee the fall of the Tzars. So, I would never count out a groundswell of anger to grow into something bigger.
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She is positioning herself for leadership after Sunak, and this issue is the hobby horse that she made for herself. And, as she will see it, migration is the issue that Reform are riding on and the main place where she will find future allies, if she gets to reshape the new, “conservative,” party. She can be the only, “conservative,” talking about the issue and stealing Farage’s oxygen.
The recent changes in migration laws were a blatant attempt to skirt international laws and protections for the most vulnerable people on Earth. They were cruel, sociopathic and they remain borderline illegal. Also, as we’ve seen, they are unworkable. But that hasn’t mattered much to the Braverman types, because they did give them what they sought, which was merely to look, “hard,” and to be unnecessarily cruel, probably killing people in the process, certainly causing a great deal of physical harm and suffering to desperate people who were entitled to care, sympathy and, if nothing else, the process of law.
I cannot see the old guard of the conservative movement following her over that cliff post election. Nor can I imagine any of the truly conservative, “conservatives,” wishing to join her in a headlong charge toward a system that cannot result in anything less than her own doom. After all, she is visibly the type of ethnic minority that Reform voters fear and loath so much. So she is building her own gallows in the long term, for the short term advantage she believes she can wangle now.
My guess is that the Conservative Party will fracture, outright, down this racist fault line, leaving the one nation, cooler headed, old fashioned conservatives to rely on their friends in the city and the press, their trust funds and the Royal Family to rebuild from a much diminished foundation.
But the new brand of Reform will also have friends in the press and money and backing from America, which is, after all, where they get all their, “ideology,” and their divisive tactics from.
Of course, there can be only one leader, and it is entirely possible that Farage and Braverman may pass each other, like ships in the night, to take charge of one another’s respective parties? But, I suspect it is more realistic that Braverman will find herself on the outside, ultimately. Either losing the whip and being rejected by reform, or being demoted by Farage from within the Tory party because he doesn’t want his own most likely successor hovering over him like the Angel of Death.
She won’t be enough of a puppet for the Reform party to control, being too, “driven,” by her own demons, so that would end badly for her, since the Reformers would only want her as a, “useful idiot,” and mascot that argues against them being racists, despite them now having erstwhile BNP candidates officially standing in their ranks right now.
All I am sure of is that the battle for both supremacy of the right, and to define what, “the right,” is, will be bloody and take no prisoners. And whilst we see many getting their well earned just desserts, it will be at the cost of other well known crooks, deadbeats and racists, climbing up on the ruins of their rival’s careers.
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1) Inflation is controlled (if, “controlled,” at all?) by The Bank Of England.
2) Inflation going down does NOT result in a reduction in prices; especially for daily essentials like food, fuel, electricity and heating.
I am heartily sick of this gaslighting of the people by our, “government.” I genuinely believe such deliberately misleading, egregious lies should be criminalised.
As to Labour using the prospect of a May election against Rishi Sunak, SO THEY SHOULD. After all, he DID put up the prospect, therefore having no one else to blame for that. And, if Labour can build up a sufficient wave of expectation in the minds of the public, perhaps Sunak will see the truth of his situation? That further disappointing the electorate with further delay may well buy the Tories six more months, but that will be six more months of British economic decline, the official declaration of Britain’s Recession and an angry public, chomping at the bit, just waiting for their opportunity to punish Sunak’s Tories for that additional delay!
Maybe (just maybe?) Sunak will have enough sense to recognise that he should quit while he’s behind, rather than set un unbeatable record for the biggest Tory defeat in democratic history? All he can do now is preside over a civil war within his own party and see their popularity further decline. Nothing will change that now. Memories are short. But they’re not THAT short.
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I too believe in taking each situation on its own merits (or demerits) and assessing them accordingly. One must be willing to admit mistakes and change one’s point of view. I have never doubted your integrity, sincerity or open mindedness in this regard.
You touch on something that has occupied my mind a lot lately. When I hear people dismissing others with an overused epithet like, “woke,” they immediately lose something in my heart and mind. There’s a negative internal recoiling within me. And it is at that, “tribalism,” I think. It is so depressing that people use these terms instead of doing the heavy lifting intellectually, for the sake of convenience and so as to, “identify,” themselves with their tribe.
As with all of these American imports, the, “culture wars,” are a deliberate attempt to dumb down discourse, tribalise all talking points and to remove responsible intelligent engagement with ideas or situations that make people uncomfortable. And because it’s easy, it’s appealing.
I nearly always find that people who use, “woke,” as a pejorative cannot define the term at all, or will often describe it as something it is objectively not.
What it actually is (as I can best describe it) can be articulated as a disparaging term of suspicion and categorisation of the, “other,” as someone who uses, “virtue signalling,” (another ridiculous term) and the appearance of seeking equality and diversity falsely, as a stick with which to beat down others in matters of art, politics and culture. It was invented (or rather, re-invented) by far right wing Americans of the Steve Bannon / Roger Stone ilk, seeking to deepen divisions in society and to raise their own boats on a tide of bile.
Anything that provides the user with a catch-all term that excuses intellectual interrogation of the facts or issues in hand is useful to the types of people who make a living from the, “outrage,” and unhappiness of others.
One of the many things I most admire about you, sir, is that you do not subscribe (so far as I can tell) to any one prescription or mode of thought, be that philosophically, politically or intellectually. You seem, rather, to encourage interrogation of the facts, analysis and consideration. You are also capable of changing your views and accounting for them. That is part of your charm as far as I’m concerned.
Perhaps the real problem is that a fully rational, open minded person, will never be able to please all the people all the time? Perhaps they should never seek to? Heck! My wife and I disagree about lots of political matters, so I would be hard pressed to conform to any one group’s best groupthink, even if I tried. But we respect one another and do not see our disagreements as a reason to lose any of that respect.
Perhaps that is the test of character we should be most concerned about? When the pejoratives and ad hominems start flying, that is usually just someone’s attempt to brow beat another person (or persons) into conforming to their tribe’s groupthink. A form of emotional blackmail. And that is another reason why I find it hard to respect people who use terms in such a manner.
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Let us remember that Lee Anderson is guilty of, “pranking,” the public in a far more egregious manner. He was caught red handed, FALSIFYING a so called, “spontaneous,” meeting with a member of the, “general public,” whilst on campaign. He didn’t realise the mic was still on him and working, whilst he was setting it up on his phone.
So, for Lee Anderson, OF ALL PEOPLE, to get all thin skinned about it and to demand an apology from LBC for the behaviour of, “the public,” is beyond absurd! It’s downright hypocritical! How about HE apologises to all of us his own falsifications?
Rachel Johnson responded in a perfectly appropriate manner, ending the call swiftly, yet ever so politely and with expressions of appropriate concern, stating instantly that the issue was one of a, “private and personal,” nature. What more could she have done on a LIVE radio show?
To be honest, I didn’t get the impression that the caller was necessarily ill in any way (though he could have been?) but merely camping it up for a laugh. His performance had something of Monty Python about it to me. If he was being sincere, he is obviously in need of mental health care (fat chance of that in the current NHS) but I honestly felt he was performing for comic effect.
And yes, he was entirely, “credible.” And Anderson’s loud complaints only serve to add further credibility. If he’d made a simple statement for the press and let it go at that, we wouldn’t even be discussing it now. The fact that it seems to have struck a nerve is what intrigues me now.
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Just imagine if the police were investigating a fraud and the suspects started saying, “Well, we’ll sift through all the evidence and hand over what is relevant, but you don’t need to decide that for yourself, or actually, ‘investigate,’ anything.” . . . 😮? . . . Any onlooker would be astounded at the sheer gall of this person! Especially when that suspect turns to the onlooker and says, “That will be half a million quid, please? Oh, didn’t I tell you? Yes, you’re paying for my lawyers. I didn’t like the state appointed ones; not bent enough. No, you don’t get any say in the matter. You were just unlucky enough to have been born into the same country as me. Not sure why you’re suddenly so indignant, since I’ve been raiding the tax payer’s pockets for years now?” . . . 😮🤦♂️
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