No sooner is one column filed than the relentless stream of nonsense, irritations and wokery floods in again. Today I cover the Gorton and Denton by-election, more Covid bollocks and colour-blind casting, this time from Greece (and courtesy of our other Hull columnist).
The Halal-Organic coalition
Quite what just happened in the Gorton and Denton by-election is hard to understand. When these major upsets occur and some minor extremist – and they are extremists – party such as The Green Party wins, it is usually the result of disaffection with the government, and a protest vote against the mainstream parties.
Winning such elections these days is largely the preserve of Reform, but not in Gorton and Denton, where they put Matt Goodwin up against the rest. The Greens won and they were largely, if not almost exclusively, helped to do so by the local Muslim vote. Even Nigel Farage packing out the higher echelons of Reform with ‘moderate’ Muslims and ditching some of its best policies such as mass remigration could not attract the bearded bigots of Gorton and Denton.
Incongruously, the Muslims of Gorton and Denton did not vote for one of their own. Instead, they voted for Hannah Spencer, an English rose-type blonde woman who once worked as a plumber. A strange twist, given that most of the men who voted do not let their wives out of the house, let alone work and, especially, not at any job requiring a monkey wrench and a spanner.
According to some commentators – comedian Leo Kearse among them – it was largely a male vote. Using the postal voting system the male heads of Muslim households, where all the man’s cousins/wives and older children have the vote, completes all the voting slips. As a friend messaged me to say, and I paraphrase, the Pakistanis of Gorton and Denton voted for a party which is obsessed with LGBTQ+ issues led by a gay Jew who takes an uncommon interest in women’s breasts.
The question remains as to why. There simply must be some tactic involved here and most probably it is being directed by some nefarious source. My guess is, whatever the tactic, it will soon be revealed.
Vacuum packed for eternity
There really are some things you can’t make up. Take the news from Greece – where they ‘went mental’ over the non-event otherwise known as ‘the Covid pandemic’ – where they are digging up the dead. Part of the ‘mentality’ in Greece was that bodies had to be buried wrapped airtight in plastic for reasons that it is simply impossible to fathom.
I mean, sticking a dead body six feet under in a sealed box usually does the trick and, as far as I am aware, there was no evidence of the Covid-19 virus tunnelling out of coffins, up through the soil and, zombie-like, grabbing people by the ankles. The problem, so the story goes, is that the shrink-wrapped bodies are not decomposing.
What did they think they would do, wrapped up in plastic where worm fungus and bacteria could not do their work? What could possibly go wrong? What intrigues me is how they found out that the bodies were not decomposing – who made that discovery? Was it a latter day Burke or Hare? Whatever the answer – and whatever the solution – I would not like to be present when they do open those plastic bags.
Blackbeth
In my last Man Cave column I mentioned that I was going to a local production of Macbeth, having received the totally unnecessary but now customary, trigger warning email. We were promised ‘Mature and intense themes, gore and torture, depictions of violence and murder, death and suicide, strobe lighting and practicing witchcraft’ and we got all of that. In fact, the production was superb.
I did find the dialogue and the monologues hard to follow at times, some of the actors did not project well except for blind actor Benjamin Wilson* who, in my mind, stole the show as Ross. But the action was relentlessly good, the set was used well and the contemporary setting – rifles, machine guns and modern clothing – largely worked.
The lead actor Oliver Alvin-Wilson, a man with film-star looks and a body to match, conveyed the agonies of Macbeth’s conscience well and I have no complaints about his acting or portrayal of the easily manipulable – by Lady Macbeth – King of Scotland. But he is black, as was Banquo, played by Daniel Poyser. Perhaps they were in that fabled Scottish regiment the Black Watch?
Before a heap of accusations of racism and, perhaps even a mention in the State of Hate 2026, I don’t have a problem with what the colour of any actor happens to be, and have, for example, sincerely expressed the hope that Idris Elba will play James Bond. But I think I am safe in saying, except for Al Jolson, the Black and White Minstrels, Justin Trudeau and the occasional Morris dancer, examples of white actors portraying black characters are scarce to non-existent. Just saying.
*Declaration of interests: Benjamin is the stepson of a very good friend and colleague.
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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In Greece the dead are buried in concrete lined family owned vault graves (not directly in the soil). After x years the bones are removed in a ceremony and reinterred in an ossuary box that is moved to the end of the vault (or sometimes put instead on a shelf in a small building within the graveyard). This traditional system ensures that more land isn’t used for burials than is strictly necessary. There are also religious reasons for this; cremation is ‘illegal’ in Greece and the Orthodox Church still blocks any attempt to construct Crematoria.
So covid-daft was/is Greece that those involved in the ritual exhumation must think the covid virus may have survived in the tissues of those buried in unorthodox ways haven’t (surprise, surprise) rotted to just a skeleton.
Is it just me, or is watching a Shakespeare Play too often an ordeal unless a) you studied that one at school and can remember what it’s about, b) you read it in full before attending and probably had to consult a commentary as well, c) you know someone in the cast, d) you’re the sort of person who can justify the cost of going to the theatre?
A small dose of either Hamlet or Othello now goes a long way for this philistine, despite numerous subsidised trips to Shakespeare productions all over Yorkshire in the 70s.