680 days ago
Nobody seems to care about history being accurate any more. As long as it fits the narrative that English folks were universally bad and that vast amounts of money must be paid to the imagined victims of slavery. The Church of England buys into this piffle and has produced a big report into its slaving links with especial reference to the South Sea Company and has found £100 million down the back of the sofa to compensate communities that might have suffered. Where to start?
681 days ago
Some crackpot school in London has renamed itself as it does not wish to be linked to Sir Francis Drake because he was an evil slave trader. Except that he was not. The BBC is keen to whip up more fake history and has joined in the battle as you can see below.
929 days ago
Thousands of folks on twitter liked this picture on twitter because in 2022 sniffing out sexism is almost as virtuous as sniffing out racism althought not nearly as virtuous as sniffing out transphobia.
1433 days ago
I note that Matt Hancock has a First Class degree in PPE from Oxford and admit that I cannot match his Geoff. I only achieved a Desmond from the same place in the same subject and, at the time, I remember thinking that I was jolly lucky not to have racked up a Douglas. I am pretty sure that my late uncle Christopher Booker had the same feeling after coming away with a second from Cambridge where he read history.
1444 days ago
Somehow it sounds more chilling in French, bringing to mind thoughts of Paris in 1793. Younger readers whose entire history curriculum consisted of studying the Nazis, do a google search.
1453 days ago
Of course Black Lives Matter. This is a mixed raced household so why would we think anything else? However, as I noted at the weekend, the Black Lives Matter movement has fallen from popular grace and is now overwhelmingly seen as increasing racial division by both white and BAME folks. As I noted then, there are those last redoubts who seek to hide inconvenient truths. The teaching unions and the school system is one redoubt. So too are the Marxist Madrassas, such as Manchester University. Also doing its bit is the National Trust. But the strongest supporter is, of course, the BBC.
1455 days ago
The last sixteen months have seen three enormous deaths for me, the passing of the three most important men in my life. And there was a fourth.
1478 days ago
Notwithstanding the fact that we had the same conversation a year ago, I asked the Mrs this morning to name the year of the Gunpowder Plot. She ummed a bit so I said “how about to the nearest 10 years”. She countered with “how about to the nearest hundred?” Okay said I and she answered 1776.
1543 days ago
My friend and journalistic hero Kelvin Mackenzie once said something along the lines of “you sell newspapers by putting lesbians on the front page.” I asked him today if this was a true quote and he said that he could not remember but it is the sort of thing he would have said on his glory days on the Currant Bun. But perhaps you can have too much of a good thing, especially when the lesbians you are outing are a) dead and b) not lesbians.
1550 days ago
This podcast is dedicated to my friend and a man who for more than 30 years has been a key figure in my life and for whom my admiration and love knows no bounds. That man is William Long, who lies gravely ill in a New York hospital. We might disagree on much, but on the need to call out a lie and on the imperative of original historic research and putting matters within that context we will always agree on. I thus discuss the BBC, Last Night of the Proms, what Rule Britannia actually means and refers to, its historic context, some of its critics and what motivates them and allows them to smell out racism and imperialism without reference to actual fact. I refer also to my article on Thomas Guy, another man facing erasure as we do not teach anyone our nation’s history nor care about the actual facts of it. Mentioned in this podcast are The Mrs, the great Neil Masuda, Laurence Fox, Tony Hall, Matthew Hopkins, and his true heir today Kehinde Andrews.
1608 days ago
As I warned Cambridge don, Dr Gopal, one day you will cease to be seen as a revolutionary and new revolutionaries will come along and devour you like a dinosaur. Comrade Sadiq Khan, Mayor of Stab City, rather proves my point today as he tweets about the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York. Of course, Mayor Khan is already active in erasing old history, pushing to pull down statues and rename streets. If you can do that, it will be even simpler for this simple man to make up a new history.
1625 days ago
I start with a few thoughts on history as I chat at length to my old teacher. Then it is onto the campaign to scrub Joshua’s hero, Chase, from history. Finally I discuss what I shall be doing in, I fear, the rain from 4.30 AM tomorrow. If you have yet to donate to rogue bloggers for Woodlarks please do so as we are now wiothin spitting distance of raising enough to ensure it survives. Please give just a tenner with gift aid ( or more) HERE. Then I look at US Covid 19 data at Avacta (AVCT) where there is a dual threat to the share price and at Novacyt (NCYT) where implosion is accelerating. Finally a detailed look at IQE (IQE).
1625 days ago
Yesterday my Mrs attended an online union meeting at her University. Natch the statues were on the agenda. She, a person of colour, suggested that they should not all be pulled down but the middle class, white, Guardian reading, classes know what black folks really want to fight racism. Thus the Mrs was in a small minority and the Union at her left wing Madrassa now has a clear policy. Why, I wonder, are folks so angry about so many figures from the past?
There are many reasons but one is, I am afraid, ignorance. I went into some detail HERE yesterday, explaining why Thomas Guy was not really tainted by slavery at all. However, facts do not matter and his statue, at the Hospital founded with nearly all of his cash, is for the melting pot.
1628 days ago
In stab City, the lawless moral cesspit that is the capital of Airstrip One, hapless Mayor Sadiq Khan has waded into the slavery row with predictable vigour.
2671 days ago
The magazine written for millennial women, Marie Claire, has slated the film Dunkirk. This time it is not about its factual accuracy in having a male and white cast. This slating from the liberal media is even dafter. The tweet below says all you need to know about this 80 year old market leading title which, a former editor stated "is read by intelligent women who are in tune with global issues." You have got to be kidding.
2973 days ago
Out in Colombia a referendum on whether a peace treaty between the State and the loathsome murderers of the Maoist terror group FARC should be ratified has just seen the great unwashed vote the wrong way. It seems that the oiks were not so keen on an amnesty for the butchers and so voted in a way that the liberal intelligentsia across the world do not understand. it is Brexit all over again, why can't the lower classes do what is good for them, wails the elite. Meet academic Caroline Dodds Pennock from Sheffield University. She won't like me posting her photo but since you, the taxpayer, have been paying her wages since she graduated from Oxford you have a right to know how she thinks.
4364 days ago
PrintYesterday Tullow (LSE:TLW) announced that it had let its interests in Guyana drop. The press office at Northern Petroleum (LSE:NOP) has fielded a number of calls about how Northern was going to proceed with its drilling campaign in the area. Is this an indictment of how badly history is taught in schools or how badly geography is taught?
4470 days ago
How many British troops have now been killed or maimed in Afghanistan? In case you have lost count the score is now (at August 17) 425 dead and (at July 31) well over 6,000 personnel have had to be evacuated from the country as a result of injury or illness. Source MOD. These are terrible numbers and grow every day. And to what end?
Over the weekend we learned that the Taliban had beheaded 17 young people (15 men, two women) for having a party where they danced together. This happened in a “Taliban controlled” part of Afghanistan. The fact is that large swathes of the country are controlled by these Islamofascist creeps whose stone-age ideas of justice are abhorrent. In other places the regime of President Karzai is propped up by Western military force. But is “our guy” such a great guy?
