sadoldgit

I have managed to get a screen shot but can’t PM it to you as I am not a subscriber nor can I upload it for the same reason. I think I found a work around though although it is only shows the first screen. However it shows my current and previous stalkers so here you go… https://imgur.com/a/u0fPsCL Justifying racism? Please do me the courtesy of telling me how you come to that conclusion. Before you do though please read the article by Fraser Nelson published in The Spectator that I posted earlier. He has a far greater insight into this issue than either you or I. Then perhaps give your own head a wobble.

Yes it was an octopus. If you read the article from The Spectator above it explains the imagery and might help a few from going down a particular rabbit hole.

Defence of Martin Rowson in, of all places, The Spectator. Well worth reading for those with more than a couple of brain cells. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/in-defence-of-martin-rowson/ Being a cartoonist is a high-risk job nowadays. Your job is to satirise and caricature, to exaggerate bodily features. Every week, we do this at The Spectator in our cover art drawn by the peerless Morten Morland. Kim Jong Un is rather short: Morten makes him minuscule. Donald Trump has small hands and feet; Morten shrinks them even further. If someone has a prominent feature, then you exaggerate the feature. It’s the way cartooning works. If the subject has slightly big ears, you make them massive – as we have for the King in our coming coronation cover. It’s comic, teasing and, yes, sometimes brutal. But if you do this to a religious figure or an ethnic minority, you can be easily accused of bigotry. As the Guardian has just found out. I had no idea that Richard Sharp, who last week quit as BBC chairman, is Jewish. I do know him a bit: we’re both on the board of the Centre for Policy Studies but I didn’t and would not expect to know if he is Jewish any more than he’d know what I get up to on Sunday mornings. Martin Rowson did know, having been to school with Sharp, but fatally gave this no thought when drawing the cartoon that has landed the Guardian in such trouble. To lampoon a Jewish man with an squid, Goldman Sachs box etc is obviously beyond what anyone (I suspect Rowson himself) would regard as acceptable. But this did not occur to Rowson or, I suspect, to anyone else at the Guardian who saw that cartoon. The idea that anyone at this newspaper was cackling at an anti-Semitic joke is plainly absurd: they will be as horrified as Rowson now is at this simple, explainable and tragic mistake. So why was it drawn that way? Sharp used to be Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs – which is why Rowson added a Goldman Sachs-branded box in the illustration, with a miniature Sunak inside it. The bank was famously derided as an omnipresent ‘vampire squid sucking the face of humanity’ (a famous reference Guardian readers know and love) which is why Rowson depicted a squid in a box Sharp is carrying. Sharp is stonkingly rich and helped to arrange an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson but failed to properly disclose that when Johnson made him BBC chairman. Should Sharp have disclosed this to the parliamentary committee? Of course. His failure to do so led to his resignation. All this is rich material for any satirist, especially one on the left. So Rowson depicted all of this in a cartoon (above) in which Sharp’s face is a tiny part. It’s not a sympathetic portrayal: he looks like a venal millionaire, which is consistent with the Guardian’s line and Rowson’s oeuvre. So Rowson’s explanation, which he has given at length, makes sense: As an editor of a magazine that runs humour and satire, I’ve been through similar storms over the years. Cartoons can now cause more controversy than any story. Post-Charlie Hebdo the police even came to visit me to explain that I am now deemed a terrorist target due to the fact that we publish satire. But cartoonists lampoon everyone and everything and have done for centuries: if you self-censor through fear of a mob, then satire bows to the mob. To run satire means you are likely to be the target of outrage squads who deploy various misrepresentation techniques. A zoomed-in clip of Sharp was passed around Twitter, for example, out of context from the overall image. A Twitter storm then started, as they often do in holiday weekends. Twitter storms tend to have five stages. 1) General, often confected outrage 2) Someone in public office joins in, making it a reportable news story 3) The target can make the mistake of responding, either with a statement or by removing the offending joke/cartoon, thinking it will relieve rather than add pressure 4) A resignation hunt then starts – especially if a publication’s staff join in the attack until 5) someone is fired, to assuage the mob, usually because the commercial people (who have less stomach for fights) say it’s damaging business. At The Spectator, we’re lucky. We’re family-owned, so don’t have woke shareholders worrying about their Twitter feeds. When advertisers were persuaded by Twitter trolls to boycott us due to a Matthew Parris article on trans issues, Andrew Neil banned the advertiser. I often think of the protection that the model of family ownership offers against such forces: what publication, anywhere, has actually banned advertisers? The biggest, greatest publications in the world have ended up yielding to the trolls. Twitter storms led to Kevin Myers being fired as a Sunday Times columnist, Ian Buruma as editor of the New York Review of Books, Kelvin MacKenzie from the Sun, Iain Macwhirter from the Herald and many more. Even David Remnick, one of the most successful magazine editors ever, had to cancel his interview with Steve Bannon after a Cat-4 Twitter storm. But what’s odd, with the Rowson row, is seeing those who normally abhor cancel culture getting stuck in now that the victim is the Guardian. Yes, this fraction of this cartoon can be made to look very bad if cropped in a certain way – but does anyone seriously, genuinely believe that Rowson was motivated by anti-Semitism? That the squid he drew was not the ‘vampire squid’ of lore but in fact a dog-whistle reference to a notorious Nazi squid cartoon 1938? The cartoon certainly was dangerously open to misinterpretation. Like most editors, I like to think our checks would have spotted this. But systems sometimes fail: that’s an occupational hazard in publishing. And the penalties for these failures are higher in the digital age. To complain about it would be like a ship’s captain complaining about the sea. This risk has emerged since I have been editor – and adapting to that risk is now a major part of our editing furniture. In a digital age where jokes are twisted and fed into a confected-outrage machine, the editing process must now mean more checks, minimising scope for the misinterpretations of jokes while protecting the range and daring of publications. And protecting our contributors, who cannot be expected to see everything they draw or write through the perspective of their most twisted critic. We don’t want them to worry about the mad world out there, or the new tactics used by the outrage squad (using headline screengrabs, no links, making sure context is not given etc). We have a system of checking for this, of recognising when a topic (jihadi finance, climate change, trans, religion) is in a high-risk category. We then go through it from a prosecutorial point of view, trying to anticipate the inevitable IPSO complaint, malicious screen-grabbing or malicious misinterpretation. It’s important that this is done after the writing is submitted as we don’t want writers choking their art by trying to think of what trolls might say. Anyone who crafts every sentence worried about being ratioed on Twitter ceases to become a writer. Our red-team process is intended to protect our writers and readers, so the new era of online madness makes no impact on the boldness, humour or cartoons of The Spectator. Such systems are needed, now, to protect anyone who publishes satire or against-the-grain comment. This involves lots of borderline decisions. If you’re too censorious, you rob your publication of its edge and identity. If you’re too lax, you risk stumbling into battles that you cannot win. Cartoonists are very aware of this risk, and most would acknowledge a caricature of anyone of an ethnic minority background is high risk. This process is not watertight. Such slips are inevitable, But when they happen, there’s a difference between a cartoon slip made in good faith and catching the Guardian staff in a secret screening of Triumph of the Will. The Spectator’s cartoon editor, Michael Heath, has been drawing cartoons since the 1950s and speaks eloquently about how dangerous it has now become. The more censorious society becomes, the greater flak comics, satirists and cartoonists come under. Twitter has put rocket boosters on this trend as it allows the selective editing of jokes or cartoons to fuel its outrage machine. So people in Pakistan can now see cartoons published in Denmark and protest accordingly. Charlie Hebdo changed the debate once again. We can see, here, attempts to install a secular sharia: to put certain religious figures and themes beyond depiction or satire. And we can see paler reflections of this in the hounding of other satirists. Mark Knight, an acclaimed Australian cartoonist, had to go into hiding after a Level-3 Twitter storm over his Serena Williams cartoon. It took an adjudication by the Australian Press Council to show that he was not referencing Jim Crow cartoons in his cartoon of her. His Serena was uncontroversial to those who know his style (he’s famous in Australia) but was seen as racist by those in the UK and US. Knight ended up having to move house for his own safety. When satirists and cartoonists end up being targeted in this way, anyone who values free speech ought to be concerned – regardless of what political side you are on. An offer fit for a King Get the next 10 weeks for the price of one – plus a free commemorative coronation mug CLAIM OFFER And yes, the Guardian would have joined the pile-on if this were any other newspaper in any other country. No other publication gives such energetic coverage to cartoon Twitter storms: in the Times, New York Post, Boston Herald etc. The Guardian was covering a Twitter storm over a Der Spiegelcartoonist only last week, but those who deplore all this should not join the pile-on now just because the Guardian itself lies at the centre. Back to Rowson: He made a terrible but honest mistake. Rowson is no anti-Semite and no one is seriously pretending otherwise. If the Guardian didn’t spot this, that’s in part because we’re moving towards a liberal era where people are less obsessed by faith, sexuality and other such identity markers that the people themselves never mention. When I first came to London 25 years ago, I was shocked to find out people did make mental lists of who in public life is Jewish and who was not. Happily, now, almost no one gives it a second thought. Which was Rowson’s undoing, in this case. He’ll feel awful about this. Any cartoonist would. He has become the latest victim of a trend in digital life where cartoonists are flayed, apologies are not accepted and forgiveness is not offered. No one who cares about satire and its role in our public debate should draw any satisfaction from the storm he now finds himself in. ————————————— As regards a screen shot Whelk, I am afraid that the list is rather long now and could probably do with some pruning. I would prefer not to publish it on here as, apart from the right wing anti woke brigade, I prefer to keep the other names to myself. Suffice to say that if I did regularly read their posts I would be tempted to reply. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss!

It’s not difficult to laugh at them is it? Seriously though, a caricature of Richard Sharp looks like Richard Sharp and a caricature of Rishi Sunak looks like Rishi Sunak and people get in a lather about one but not the other. Silly really isn’t it, but if you make that point you get labelled a rabid racist apparently. I saw a caricature of Suella Braverman last week that was far worse (if you get upset by over exaggeration of certain features) and no one made a squeak about that. You also have to chuckle when you see the same people making digs at me for listening to a radio show then spend even more of their time waiting for me to post so that they can have their daily pile on. Oh the irony. By the way boys, I spent years listening to Hawksbee and Jacobs, do you have an issue with that too? PS I don’t usually read the posts from the Usual Subjects unless they appear in quotes from others, but I do find it amusing how quickly their names appear beneath my posts, especially as you would imagine that most of them have full time jobs 😉

Rag? It wasn’t an article it was a cartoon and the cartoon actually looked like Sharp. Cartoons exaggerate features and if you look at it Sunak actually had a bigger nose but that was ignored. If you have read any of my posts you will see that I have said that Abbott needs to be sanctioned if found by the inquiry to be at fault and have supported Starmer’s decision to withdraw the whip from her. Other than that, spot on. Not worried about the rise of National Conservatism? Perhaps you should be.

So the current Tory Party are a bunch of pinkos? Perhaps not… https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/30/national-conservatism-far-right-divisive-tories

Nothing better to do? I am not going to bore the readers of this thread any more by responding to your every point as you seem determine to misrepresent what I say, but I will respond to a few. I said I didn’t think that her words in that letter were anti-Semitic. It was my opinion and we are all entitled to that. I did accept that others thought otherwise but have yet to see why, Keir Starmer has not qualified his statement yet other than to say it is a “gut feeling”. As he will know, that does not stand up in court. It is down to the inquiry to decide and I await their comments with interest. I certainly did not spend all day try to prove that Jewish people are not a race. Looking for a definitive answer shows that I was open to a “definitive answer”. I still don’t know what the definitive answer is. Only a very stupid or deliberately obtuse person would misinterpret what I had said. What is clear is that there probably is no definitive answer and that the issue is more nuanced and not black and white (pun intended). Sadly you made the big mistake of quoting Turkish. Anyone reading this forum for any length of time will know that he is a WUM and is not worth bothering with. The best definition of being woke that I have found so far is “not being an a-hole”. Given that Turkish is the complete antithesis of being woke, that gives you a fair indication of what he is and from where his posts come from. Enjoy the rest of your day and hopefully this has given you pause for thought too.

What if they were to come back here and be a drain on the NHS and welfare system rather than someone who will step back into his job in the NHS looking after people. What if the “British national” is a rapist, a murderer or a burglar? What if, what if?…the only people who get worked up about this stuff are the far right bigots. Most normal people, I’m sure, are glad that he was able to make it back. Indeed. I was paraphrasing. I think we all know what Orwell was alluding to. It appears someone holding a British passport is more “equal” than someone holding a British work visa who has been part of our society and working here for 4 years.

How about showing a bit of compassion and humanity for another human being? You are beginning to make the likes of Suella Braverman and Priti Patel look like paragons of virtue. I seem to remember you trying to label me a racist because I mentioned “brown” people (a term they use themselves and is in general use) yet here you are spouting the shit that the NF would be proud of. You really are a deeply unpleasant human being. You were unpleasant as Delldays. You were unpleasant as Batman but you have taken it to a new level in your current incarnation on here. George Orwell nailed you and the others like you with this - All people are equal, but some are more equal than others.

He has been working at Manchester Infirmary for the last 4 years and has a work permit you cretin. He was out there visiting family for Eid. Despite the fact that the NHS are desperate for staff, because he has dark skin and is a “Johnny Foreigner” means we shouldn’t let him back to work unless he passes Batman’s border control test? You truly are the love child of Nigel Farage and Suella Braverman.

Would that be the thread where hypochondriac insisted that all Muslims were responsible for terrorised activities in this country because they weren’t informing the police of what they knew….even if the knew nothing? That was around the same time he provided us with this quote, “Thank God my wife isn’t a Muslim”. This is the same person who played down the problems of racism faced by footballers as not as bad as the 70’s, as if that made it ok now. The pile on group are also the same people who got themselves all worked up when the decision was made to take the knee as a part of raising the issue of dealing with racism in football. Looking for why Starmer thought Abbott’s post was anti/Semitic. The best I can find so far is that he has a “gut feeling”. Having read her comments again what I failed to mention before is that she said various white factions do not experience racism “all their lives”. She could well be right, but then not all black people necessarily experience racism all of their lives either.

Yesterday both Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman gave statements that, apart from being factually wrong or unsubstantiated, if they had been made by the likes of Nigel Farage, Nick Griffin, Katie Hopkins, Britain First, The National Front etc, no one would have been surprised. Words, statements that would have rightly been called out as racist are now being used normally on an almost daily basis by senior Government figures. We have the most right wing Government in decades (despite what Ducky would have us believe) who are shamelessly race baiting and trying to whip up the voters against migrants (along with Left Lawyers, Remoaners, trans people etc) because their record in Government is so bad they have to defer to Trump’s tactics. Sadly we have another 18 months of this b/s and it is only going to get worse.

Good afternoon to you H&W. I am flattered that you have taken so much time and effort to read and respond to my humble posts. I am, however, totally baffled as to how and why you have come to some of your conclusions. Let us have a walk through your latest response in the hope that we can find ourselves on the same page. The “numerous people” you mention are probably the small group of posters who feel the need to follow me around an internet forum and, for reasons I will not bore you with, I don’t bother to read their posts. I think I made it very clear as to why I was only dealing with that one particular letter and it’s consequences on this occasion. The action taken against her comes from the content of this letter, not from previous statements. I believe that she knew exactly what she was doing for the reasons suggested earlier. It is just an opinion and as such, could be wrong. The reason I was dealing with her comments in this letter alone was due a) to its timing and likely reaction in the media and b) the response taken by the Leader of the Labour Party to the publication of this particular letter. I (and others) didn’t find the contents of this particular letter to be anti-Semitic. Others did. People read text and come to different opinions shocker. How many people did you hear going in to bat for the Irish, travellers and redheads against those who called out her letter for its comments about Jewish people? This has nothing to do with anything other than an observation about which minority group was affected by her comments the most. You seem to be insinuating that this has something to do with discrimination against Jewish people when it is just a reflection to the fallout from the letter. The so called “dismissiveness” towards other minority groups was exactly the opposite and was such a tongue in cheek comment I thought people would see the meaning behind it without the use of an emoji. My bad. Why can’t I or anybody else use the Holocaust to make a point, especially when we are discussing this subject? It is a know fact that many people from lots of different minority groups were persecuted during that period of history and I think they were probably more concerned with staying alive than fussing over the correct word to use when discribing what they were facing. We are getting tied up with words, no one more than Abbott herself if you read her text. Perhaps I am making this point badly, or perhaps people are trying to find a way to make her text wholly discriminatory against one specific group of white people. In no way was I defending Abbott or her hierarchy of racism, quite the opposite. Keir Starmer made the point that their is no hierarchy of racism and I agreed with him. Deflection? Throughout I have made it clear that I thought that her letter was out of order and that there needed to be consequences. Why would I want to deflect from that? She is rightly being dealt with and I praised Starmer from my first post on the subject for dealing with it quickly. My concern was that the right wing media would use this for deflection themselves (which some did). There were two more appalling statements from senior governments ministers that need unpacking but we are still talking about Abbott! Abbott is an unfortunate sideshow, when the Home Secretary talks about “illegal immigrants” when it is not illegal to land on our shores and seek asylum. I shan’t dignify her and Jenrick’s other comments here and now. ”Spending the day trying to find out something”. The argument had been made (not by me) that Kewish people could not be subject to racism because they are not a race and therefore cannot be subjected to racism. I was curious to know if this was correct to did some digging. Why would that be an issue for you? It was my time and surely we should be posting from a position of fact where possible? As it was there were plenty of articles claiming it is and also claiming that it isn’t. If there is a definitive position it affects the original argument doesn’t it? I was not defending “Abbott’s position on racism and do not agree with it and said as such. Again, I have said from the beginning that her letter is out of order and that there were consequences, which there have been and probably will attract further action. Rightly so. I don’t know how you have come to the conclusion that I am defending her when the only thing I have said that could be construed as positive is that I dont believe these remarks are anti/Semitic. That, in no way, constitutes support for her letter. Red flags? The only problem I have in this particular issue is whether her choice of words and use of language in this letter actually constitute anti-Semitism as this is the letter and these are the comments that she has been suspended for. Whether it is anti-Semitic or not, the letter still warrants suspension in my view. Have I made that clear enough??🙏 If you still feel that I am an Abbott apologist, there is no more I can say. Have a lovely day and let’s hope for 3 points tonight 🥳🤞

I have read some Baddiel on the subject. I have spent much of today trying to find out definitively whether the Jewish people are a race, a religion, an ethnicity, a heritage…what precisely. Plenty of well written articles but nothing definitive either way. The closest I have come is a legal ruling by an American judge stating that the Jewish people are not a race, but can be subjected to racism (for reasons that are too longwinded to get into here). Make of that what you will! Back to the infamous letter. Abbott was responding to an article that put it that white people could experience racism too. The way I read her reply was that whilst certain types of white people, Jews, travellers, Irish, redheads experienced discriminatory behaviour, only black people experienced “racism” and seemed to be trying to redefine what we think we know racism to be. The dictionary definition of antisemitism is “displaying hatred or hostility or prejudice towards Jewish people”. I didn’t read any hatred or hostility towards Jewish people in her reply. Prejudice? Hmmm. She mentioned a number of white groups that have also faced bigotry, persecution, discrimination, but there doesn’t seem to be such a backlash from the Irish,travellers or redheads. She didn’t single out Jewish people she singled out white people. Does that constitute prejudice towards Jewish people or prejudice against white people? You mention Corbyn. I don’t think being pro Palestinian automatically makes you an anti- Semite and I don’t believe that Corbyn is anti-Semitic. I do believe he handle the claims of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party very poorly though. We can bat this stuff back and forth all day long, but the main point is that Starmer dealt with it as soon as it kicked off and hopefully this (she) will be one less liability for him in the run up to the next election.

Seriously? I expected better from you Whelk. If you believe that there is no hierarchy when it comes to bigotry, prejudice and discrimination and that Diane Abbott was wrong in trying to claim that black people have had it worse and longer than others because their issue is “racism”, why is it them an anti-Semitic thing to do to point out that this issue is the same for all of those affected? Do you think that Jewish, Romany, Slavs, Black, communist,homosexual, disabled etc people herded into the gas chambers at Auschwitz were wondering if they were there because of racism or bigotry or discrimination? If it it wrong it is wrong. It doesn’t make it worse if it is directed at one specific group, which is precisely where Abbott’s arguement failed so badly. Hopefully the focus will turn towards the appalling rhetoric used by Braverman and Jenrick against migrants. It seems that they can pour bigotry, prejudice and discrimination towards this small group of people with impunity. Wrong type of victims of prejudice so therefore fair game I guess.

An article explaining the semantics in this case. https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/24/diane-abbott-letter Most of my points were pure speculation but yes, I do believe that she knew that the contents of this letter would cause a stir, as you say, it isn’t as if she hasn’t been there before. My points were directed at the contents of this letter and this letter alone and has nothing to do with anything else because some have discerned this letter as anti/Semitic in itself. Interesting that it has now distilled down to just an issue about Jewish people when she grouped together various other types who also face bigotry, discrimination and prejudice. As Starmer says, there is no hierarchy when it comes to these issues, but there clearly is given the way that her letter has now become about anti-Semitism alone. Maybe we need new campaigns for the others, travellers, Irish and ginger’s lives matter?

One of the arguments I heard in defence of Abbott’s comments yesterday was that the Jews are not a race per se, Judaism is a religion, therefore they cannot face racism. The argument against that was if you are born of a Jewish mother, you are Jewish even if you do not embrace the religion. I have looked up defined human “races” and Jewish does not feature as an actual race. This article claims that it is not a “race” as we understand it. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/are-jews-a-race/ I am not making an argument either way, but, in this instance, I do think that she was getting herself tied up in semantics and was not deliberately denigrating Jews, travellers, red haired people etc.

I think you have misunderstood what I was saying. I certainly didn’t say that this was an “elaborate master plan.” I was merely putting another angle out there for discussion. The words “I wonder” were the clue. Yes she has previous for car crash interviews. On this occasion she wasn’t tripped up by having to think on her feet. She had plenty of time to select what she wanted to say and how she was going to say it. Apparently she sent the same draft twice three hours apart. She sent it a week before it was published so had plenty of time to phone up The Observer, explain it was a mistake, ask for it to be withdrawn and send another, less problematic response. My other point about “why now” is pertinent. She knows full well now that Labour under Starmer deal with perceived anti-Semitism quickly and seriously (not least because her previous partner has been thrown out of the party for the same issue). She will have known exactly what was going to happen to her and what an uproar it would cause, despite the very swift apology. You say I don’t understand the meaning of her comments? Can you show me where her response displays hate or hostility towards Jewish people? Can you show me where she denied the Holocaust? No, because she didn’t do any of that. To me anyway, her issue in the response was all about semantics. She was not denying that the Jewish people had not faced discrimination and prejudice. Her point was that black people face a different type of discrimination and prejudice. She was trying to claim the word “racism” for black people whilst not denying that others have faced and do face discrimination and prejudice for who they are. Is that really anti-Sematism? If it is, then ok. I listened to four different phone-in shows yesterday and, as you would expect, she was heavily critiqued for her comments. Most people though took issue with her badly put and worded argument rather than calling it outright anti-Semitic rhetoric. There were a few callers from the Black community who agreed with her about the perceived difference. This was on the basis that black (and brown people for that matter) are immediately identifiable through skin colour and this causes a different type of (and immediate) prejudice trigger. White Jewish people, travellers etc are not always immediately recognisable. Before you pick me up on this, this is other people from ethnic minorities saying it, not me. I don’t know how many times she has said anything like this on Starmer’s watch. What I do know is that within a very short time of the media picking up on this story, she had the whip removed. What her motivation to post such a provocative response a couple of weeks before local elections,when she knew full well that it would cause problems for Starmer and the Labour Party and take the flak away from Sunak and the Tories, only she will know. What I can say with a level of certainty is that I know a few people who are aligned to the far Left of the Labour Party who, from their online posts, seem more intent in derailing Starmer than getting the Tories out. Again, just so that we are clear, I am not saying that this was her motive, but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility is it? There is another angle. Maybe she is fed up with the focus from the Labour Party on dealing with anti-Semitism and feels that discrimination towards black people had been thrown into its shade. This might have been her attempt to put the black issue higher up the agenda? To that end it certainly made the issue of discrimination between different factions a talking point, even if it backfired very badly. This point was made on a phone-in yesterday but rebutted with the answer that the Labour Party has a great deal of work to do in getting over the anti-Semitism issues. They don’t have an “institutionalised” issue with discrimination against the black community, therefore the main focus is naturally dealing with putting the anti-Semitic stuff to bed. Sorry for yet another long ramble Badger. I promise I am working on the brevity thing.

Starmer wasn’t the party leader at that point and we all know the problems Labour had with claims of anti-Semitism under Corbyn and before. You could argue that a previous Tory Prme Minister got away with racist and Islamophobic language Scot free so why single out an opposition MP for harsher treatment 😉 I wonder if she has deliberately lobbed a hand grenade at Starmer before the council elections. There are rumours that she wasn’t planning to stand at the next election and she must have know that her words would cause an uproar and problems for Labour at a time where they had been working hard to restore their relations with the Jewish community. The speed of her apology also seems to be staged. The argument that it was just a draft doesn’t wash either. Why would you write such contentious stuff in the first place? Anyway, the main point is that it has played right into Starmer’s hands. He has shown, as with Corbyn, that he will act swiftly to deal with these issues whereas our current PM shows time and again that he bottles it when having to deal with his own in party problems.

Looking at the front pages today oboth the Murdoch Times and the Telegraph managed to make this a “Labour row” when it is nothing of the sort. It is about Diane Abbott, not the Labour Party and most papers who have put it on the front pages recognise that. Compare how quickly Starmer has dealt with this issue to the way the government prevaricate in the hope that these types of issues will go away. Even when they do finally act, it is like pulling teeth. In Braverman’s case, when she was rightly removed from office, she was back in a senior job within the wink of an eye! People like Raab, Patel, Braverman and Williamson should have been swiftly dealt with in the same manner within their own party. Raab should be facing reselection now and at the very least, should have been stood down while the enquiry was underway. We desperately need a new government and a Starmer is presently our best hope. Statements like the one made recently by Abbott are not the least bit helpful, not least to her own cause, and if she doesn’t understand that there is no place for a loose canon at this time, she has no place in political party doing it’s level best to overturn the status quo. I have just read that Keir Starmer has stated that he thinks that her remarks are anti-Semitic. Looking at the definition of anti-semitism in the dictionary it mentioned displaying hate or hostility towards the Jewish people. I can’t see any of that in her text, just a whole load of ignorance and an effort to make out that one group has faced more prejudice and discrimination than others (which is quite clearly bollocks). Her future in politics isn’t looking very secure.

I call yet another pointless, crass post from our resident xenophobe and far right agitator. But I will bite. Perhaps you would like to enlighten us as to what she said that is anti-Semitic and why? For a change perhaps you can try and respond in a more intelligent and thoughtful way rather than deploying your usual default Kevin & Perry petulant kid routine.

Whilst I don’t think her comments were anti Semitic, I do think that they were clumsy and ill thought out. Prejudice, racism, all of this stuff comes from the same place and it is not helpful to try and make the case that one is worse than another depending on who it is aimed at. The Labour Party have dealt with the issue quickly and properly and she has rightly apologised (something that you don’t get from the other side of the House under this Government) but she has left the Tories with something to attack in another week when they on the ropes for poor behaviour and governance. This is all we will be hearing about from the right wing attack dogs for the next few days and Starmer will not be happy about her poorly judged comments. I hope you are right about her career in politics. Fair play to her for making it as the first black female MP but she has all too often given the far right an easy target to aim at.

Sadly passed away aged 89. I saw his stage show many years ago and was delighted to find that our seats were central and 3 rows from the stage….until Sir Les Patterson came on and spat his drink all over the first 4 rows! I don’t find men dressing up as women intrinsically funny, but the Dame Edna persona let him get away with a priceless, acerbic wit. Very funny man (and woman). RIP ocker. Also a belated RIP to the wonderful, dog loving Paul O’Grady. He lived in the next village and although I never got to meet him many of the locals did and said that he was always happy to stop and chat and did a lot for the local community. The local Facebook page is full of stories about his helping people out and he was always popping into the local school with things to raffle to help them raise money. He offered to financially bail out the landlady of his local during Covid. No one has a bad word to say about him and it is good to see a local celeb get fully involved in their local community and to get such a warm send off. RIP Paul/Lilly. We had a walk down to the church this afternoon to pay our respects and he has been buried in the same plot as his former partner, Brendan Murphy. Lots of lovely flowers and tributes including a touching floral arrangement of his old dog, Buster.

Britannia Unhinged more like. Still, we’re are slowly getting back towards some kind of sanity in politics. https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/dominic-raabs-resignation-means-four-out-of-the-five-brexit-fanatics-behind-britannia-unchained-are-gone-next-year-voters-can-finish-the-job-brian-wilson-4114153

So the odious Raab has finally, thankfully, fallen on his sword after Sunak displayed his usual weakness by not sacking him (so much for calling Starmer Sir Softy). His arrogant, dismissive resignation statement displays all that is wrong with the Conservative Party today. There is no place for bullies anywhere in our society especially those who continue to ignore the fact that they bully (yes, you know who you are). Scumbags, every one of them.