As if President Donald J Trump did not have enough problems, what with the recent assassination attempt, the war with Iran and a trophy wife who seems to be developing a mind of her own, now he must entertain His Royal Dullness the Grand Mufti of Highgrove for a few days. In response to an earlier quip by The Donald that, without American help during the Second World War, we would all be speaking German and a little bit of Japanese in the UK, Charlie boy quipped back that without having been colonised by the British, the Americans would all be speaking French.
He’s such a wag, isn’t he? He was probably lucky not to get a right hook from the President who could also have pointed out that if the King maintained his present course of action, appeasing Islam and praising, without qualification, British Muslims that we may well be speaking Arabic before long.
Queer goings on
Despite there being no reporting restrictions on the trial which has started of the Ukrainian rentboys (at least that’s what I’ve been told they are) who firebombed Sir Kier Starmer’s car there was, initially, no mention of the trial in the mainstream media. It took the intrepid David Clews of Unity News Network to bring this to our attention on Monday and then Will Jones of the Daily Sceptic to bring it to our attention on Tuesday night.
As I write on Wednesday afternoon, several outlets such as Sky News, The Times, Reuters and Bloomberg have reported the trial within the last few hours. The BBC remained silent until today too. I can only speculate as to why the mainstream media have been so slow to pick up this story; in fact, I can’t even do that. Surely this is newsworthy or has Starmer got such a hold over the media that they are terrified to report it?
The religion of peace is recruiting
The Iranian Embassy has put out a message on its Telegram channel seeking to recruit martyrs, including children, to sign up and be ready to sacrifice their lives for the homeland. I am not the biggest fan of America’s and Israel’s current action in Iran. Not because, while Iran has been waging a proxy war for decades through international terrorism, but because for each death – innocent or otherwise – within its borders, we’ll see ten or a hundred martyrs raised to carry on that campaign.
But, when we see messages like the one sent out by their embassy, the one in our country, we see exactly how incompatible Islam – especially the brand of Shia Islam practiced in Iran – is. The Metropolitan Police have been warning about Iranian proxies in our midst, prepared to commit terrorist acts but so far, no action has been taken by the British government.
Meantime in North London two Jewish men have been stabbed and a terrorist incident declared today. The knifeman had a history of mental illness. Turns out that his mental illness is being a Muslim.
In other Shia Islamic news, a 14-year-old Iranian small boat migrant (which makes him an illegal immigrant) who raped another teenager has been allowed to walk free. The victim’s family are ‘furious’ and ‘outraged’. Clearly, they have not had the memo about cultural enrichment.
The state of this country
It is hard not to conclude, unlike D:Ream (Things can only get better), that things can only get worse. We seem to be a long way from better.
Two shopworkers have been sacked in recent weeks for doing what any decent person should do by tackling shoplifters, one by Waitrose and the other by Morrisons. This is a clear example of how we have descended into ‘anarcho-tyranny’ (a political concept describing a system that fails to enforce fundamental laws – anarchy – while aggressively regulating, prosecuting, or harassing law-abiding citizens – tyranny).
Meantime, police report that we have an epidemic of shoplifting in the UK with a 48% increase since 2019 (pre-Covid) with an annual record of 530,000 cases. It’s a bit rich for the police to be expressing concern as they seem to be too busy scanning social media for offensive tweets. And if supermarket chains sack people for doing their job, then it is hardly any wonder that shoplifters feel free to fill their boots.
Taxing times
My wife is currently having a tussle with HMRC (it keeps me out of the firing line for a while at least) over tax demands which she has either paid or which our accountant says she does not owe. During many phone calls, which she puts on speaker, she encountered someone who was extremely helpful but whose accent was clearly not that of someone born and bred in the UK. My wife was really struggling to understand the person, as was I.
I was party to the conversation and – I am not going to give my estimate of the origin of the person on the blower – at one point my wife was asked for her ‘soot cad’. My wife looked at me, I shrugged my shoulders, and she asked to person to say again which, of course was just an invitation for the person to repeat ‘soot cad’. After many attempts, and by a process of logical deduction my wife asked if the person was asking for her ‘sort code’ – which turned out to be the case.
At least my wife did not ask the person to ‘speak English’ or find someone who did. Unlike the unfortunate Newport City Councillor Janet Cleverly who, in the process of a phone call where she was struggling to understand the person at the other end asked if she could ‘speak to somebody who’s speaking English’ and compounded this by telling the person she could not understand anything being said and asked if the person could ‘Speak English’.
Oh, dear me. Whatamistakatomaka! The call handler was ‘very emotional and upset’ and, even though they withdrew from the investigation, the call had been recorded and it was reported that Janet Cleverly’s tone had been ‘unnecessary’ – whatever that means. Of course, as has become the norm, Councillor Cleverly had to make a grovelling apology, express mortification and wear metaphorical sackcloth and ashes.
I come from the Northeast of Scotland where accents are so varied and broad that people in one village often cannot understand what people from the next village are saying. So we used to beat them up instead. I moved down to the posh side of the east coast to attend The University of Edinburgh and later to Sheffield for my PhD. I took no offence if someone could not understand me; instead, I attenuated my accent. Maybe that is what the emotional and upset call handler should do. Are the elocution lessons – a common thing among the better-off when I was a lad – still available?
Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK.
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I see the influence of ‘Allo ‘Allo creeping in (Captain Bertorelli’s catchphrase). What next? Will no one hear the cries of an old (wo)man!