Saturday Evening Posts Worth Reading and the 25-Hour News.
Alastair Campbell re-writes Cameron’s valedictory speech after the ‘To lose one may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose both looks like Recklessness’ by-election.
“In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman” – George Orwell. How to explain Emily Thornberry’s resignation on the point of Miliband’s foot – to the foreigner living in your road….
Mehdi Hassan – I was a teenage Europhile.
Ian Ross explains the odds on reaching the winners enclosure in the 2015 Justice Handicap…
The front pages are all but consumed by Emily Thornberry and THAT Tweet – and no one notices Chanel 4’s investigation into possible government corruption….
Duleep Allirajah on the medieval spirit alive and well in mainstream discourse.
Some background material on Joshua Bonehead-Pain – or Bonehill-Paine if he insists – who is being hailed as a hero of free speech in some dark corners of the Internet. Case now referred to the Crown Court, as of last night.
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November 22, 2014 at 1:53 pm -
Emily Thornbury – The Attorney general needs to ensure that this sort of revenge porn is stopped.
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November 22, 2014 at 2:02 pm -
There is nothing ‘medieval’ about the way Ched Evans is being treated. There has never been an assumption that, once you have served your time – and actually it seems Evans hasn’t yet, he is still on licence – you reenter the job market at the same level that you left it. Outside the world of football fandom it’s pretty well agreed that a criminal conviction is a shameful thing, which puts you at a disadvantage against others who have a clean record.
A disadvantage which Evans could have overcome if he hadn’t been so badly advised – presumably by his family and his girlfriend’s family. Rather than trying to use the media to bludgeon his way back he should have shut up for a while, at least until his fast tracked appeal is heard. He would have had every excuse for not apologising until then, and,as Sheffield clearly wanted him back, could have kept his head well down and carried on training. As it is, his efforts to win over ‘the court of public opinion’ have been disastrous and have done more than anything to stir up the twitter shit storm.
On the Mayor Boris front, it’s fascinating that there have been miles of indignant comments about Tower Hamlet’s Mayor Luther Rahman, who has deals and grants worth at the very most hundreds of thousands of pounds under scrutiny. Meanwhile, upriver, a development opportunity worth millions if not billions is awarded through a dodgy looking process and no-one gives a flying wotsit. Always aim big is obviously the lesson………
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November 23, 2014 at 6:57 am -
“Outside the world of football fandom it’s pretty well agreed that a criminal conviction is a shameful thing, which puts you at a disadvantage against others who have a clean record.”
Hey, I might agree with you, if we didn’t have to suffer the constant drip drip drip of progressive press articles on how awful it is to be an ex-con & have no-one give you a chance at a job when you come out.
Since we do, I intend to throw Ched Evans at every single weepy ‘Guardian’ & ‘Indy’ article that shows up in future.
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November 23, 2014 at 11:11 am -
Obviously you will use the best arguments you have. However, most people will understand the difference between wanting to re-enter the job market as if nothing had happened and not getting any job at all.
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November 22, 2014 at 3:45 pm -
Fascinating to see that according to the Guardian Emily Thornberry was brought up in a Council House …..Fascinating because her Father, Cedric Thornberry was a University lecturer ……and a barrister ……and then went on to a senior post in the United Nations in order to sort out the problems of the Old Yugoslavia ……though knowing Cedric as a lecturer and knowing the old Yugoslavia I cannot think of a person less likely to be able to grasp the dynamics of life in the Balkans. Still I see Cedric divorced Emily’s Mum …..interesting if she managed to wheedle a Council flat notwithstanding her Dad might have been more able than most to pay a private sector rent. Mind you apart from being a member of the labour party aristocracy our Emily is a bonny girl to have an interest in cycling .
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November 22, 2014 at 4:00 pm -
It is a bit odd and has been mulled over considerably on the Guardian website. Cedric’s obit says he married four times and had six kids, of whom Emily was the eldest. Could be that he was just a bad payer……not unknown even among the labour party top brass.
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November 22, 2014 at 4:56 pm -
Senior Post? My understanding was that he was second in command of the United Nations….so I was equally fascinated to see mention of the council flat….wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest; probably some Grade Two listed number that they wouldn’t dream of letting one of the plebs get their hands on. She went on to become a barrister too – and you didn’t do that years ago unless Mummy and Daddy could afford to support you for a good many years…
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November 22, 2014 at 7:23 pm -
The council house of her childhood was on an estate “outside Guildford”, so I can’t imagine it had a grade 2 listing. And she went to Uni at a time when there were no fees, I think? And a father with all those ex-wives and children to support would have been stretched for cash.
However she subsequently blew all that working-class cachet: marrying a wealthy barrister who specialised in off-shore trusts, then buying a Housing Association property to rent out (the first in a portfolio of rental properties) – she hardly sounds like a Socialist to me. As I’ve seen more than one blogger lamenting: where are all the ‘working people’ in the Workers’ party?-
November 22, 2014 at 8:00 pm -
White Van Dan however does not however live in a council house – at least it doesn’t look like one to me. Gotta love those Champagne Socialists.
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November 22, 2014 at 10:28 pm -
Well it seems for once I may have connected in the public bar at the Raccoon Arms.
Our Cedric was an interesting character in as much as he was a rather typical apparatchik of the University where I misspent my youth.
For those who are more interested and more astute than I am the link between Cedric and the labour aristocracy might have been forged when Cedric was a lecturer at the LSE …..and Cherie Blair was an undergraduate…. in a manner of speaking perhaps its not what one knows but who one knows.
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November 23, 2014 at 11:06 am -
A propos Ed Milibands stupid response to the question, ‘What do you think when you see a white van parked outside an (ex)-Council house’ – fatuous answer, ‘Respect’ – the proper answer would be this:
‘If I see a new Transit, I think that the driver’s up to no good; in Scotland he’d be called a ‘tink’ (= tinker); in Kent a pikey; in the West Country, a hippy; in the North a ‘diddy’ (=didicoit). Nowadays, it’d probably be full of Romanian gypsies with a load of dubious scrap metal in the back – stolen copper electricity cable, bronze statues and brass war memorials, lead from church rooves. If I see it’s an old Transit, I know that it’s an honest workman earning his daily bread.’
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November 24, 2014 at 9:35 am -
fatuous answer, ‘Respect’
Clearly the opposite of what he first thought of! He should just replace the entire shadow cabinet with plasticine figures.
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November 23, 2014 at 9:00 pm
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