Best Of

I see Labour have equalled Liz Truss's record low:

https://x.com/FindoutnowUK/status/1996572051478282392


Find Out Now
@FindoutnowUK
Find Out Now voting intention:
🟦 Reform UK: 31% (-)
🔵 Conservatives: 20% (+2)
🟢 Greens: 18% (+1)
🔴 Labour: 14% (-1)
🟠 Lib Dems: 11% (-1)

Changes from 26th November
[Find Out Now, 3rd December, N=2,591]

Lettuce see how that pans out.

The lettuce strikes back:

https://x.com/trussliz/status/1996640749304402407

They tried to silence her. They failed.

The Liz Truss Show — December 5th.

It’s time to fight for the West.

For someone the mythical ‘they’ tried to silence she’s been very vocal ever since she was defenestrated

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:


“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”


As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.

How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.

The point is Farage was about 14 or 15 at the time, while the BBC, run by fully grown adults, was showing the Black and White Minstrel Show during the same period.

It's not much of a point, though, is it.

Isn't it?

That's what I said, didn't I?

Yes and you’re wrong. It’s perfectly valid point to make.

Societal cultural norms change over time. What’s acceptable now won’t be in a decade. The further you go back the more the change.

I'm NF's age. It wasn't any sort of cultural norm in the 70s to taunt and bully Jewish people about Nazi atrocities. He's flapping around desperately and dishonestly.

I’m around 20 years older and went to a school with a significant number of Jewish boys. There was a bit of antisemitism but it was generally felt to be ‘bad form’. That was in despite the Morning Assembly being being segregated; Catholic and Jewish boys came in for the announcements.

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:


“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”


As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.

How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.

The point is Farage was about 14 or 15 at the time, while the BBC, run by fully grown adults, was showing the Black and White Minstrel Show during the same period.

It's not much of a point, though, is it.

Isn't it?

That's what I said, didn't I?

Yes and you’re wrong. It’s perfectly valid point to make.

Societal cultural norms change over time. What’s acceptable now won’t be in a decade. The further you go back the more the change.

I'm NF's age. It wasn't any sort of cultural norm in the 70s to taunt and bully Jewish people about Nazi atrocities. He's flapping around desperately and dishonestly.

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

He does have a fair point here. Many BBC shows now have ‘trigger warnings’ even Little Britain and, yes, racist TV shows and shows that would fall foul of today’s modern sensibilities were in abundance on all three channels back then.

You also have the MSM trying to give the guy from Oxford Uni who gloated over Charlie Kirk’s death friendly interviews to plead his case as he shouldn’t pay for saying silly things when young. I don’t think that’s unfair. What Farage said over 40 years at school, who cares, it what he is now that matters.

I like the programmes where they start by saying it "contains moderate language". It sounds like they might be drafting a resolution on sheltered housing at a Lib Dem conference.

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

While Farage is expert at whataboutery, straw men, rephrasing, non apologies and so on, I just draw attention to what, it is alleged, comes from the actual time when he was at school, written in 1981 by a teacher to the head. It includes these words:


“Another colleague, who teaches the boy, described his publicly professed racist and neo-fascist views; and he cited a particular incident in which Farage was so offensive to a boy in his set, that he had to be removed from the lesson. This master stated his view that this behaviour was precisely why the boy should not be made a prefect. Yet another colleague described how, at a Combined Cadet Force (CCF) camp organised by the college, Farage and others had marched through a quiet Sussex village very late at night shouting Hitler-youth songs.”


As contemporaneous evidence from decades before people knew he might be PM it is, if authentic (and Michael Crick says it is) it is of greater evidential value than all the (I have no doubt generally reliable) accounts from memories years later.

How important it is is a separate question. But I think Reform and Farage are troubled by this.

The point is Farage was about 14 or 15 at the time, while the BBC, run by fully grown adults, was showing the Black and White Minstrel Show during the same period.

It's not much of a point, though, is it.

Isn't it?

That's what I said, didn't I?

Yes and you’re wrong. It’s perfectly valid point to make.

Societal cultural norms change over time. What’s acceptable now won’t be in a decade. The further you go back the more the change.

I'm NF's age. It wasn't any sort of cultural norm in the 70s to taunt and bully Jewish people about Nazi atrocities. He's flapping around desperately and dishonestly.

Indeed. I'd go further. I'm older, and this notion that racist, or sexist, 'banter' was socially acceptable in the 70s and 80s just isn't true. Of course such banter existed, but both had been challenged since the mid-1960s by anti-racist and feminist groups and, though there remained much to do, such banter wasn't the norm any more, and its proponents were on the back foot, certainly by the mid-to-late 1970s.

I rather suspect one of Farage's problems is that he perceived the banter of the posh-heads at Dulwich College (and subsequently in the City) as the norm.

This is Farage outbursts against the BBC

https://news.sky.com/liveblog-webview/politics-latest-budget-taxes-reeves-starmer-labour-badenoch-farage-12593360

Will likely play well to Reform base (analogue is Trump's attacks on MSM). But not so much beyond it - BBC remains respected . And, on the face of it, having an argument with national broadcaster about whether you are a racist seems sub-optimal.

I can see the theory- it was respectable in the seventies, and Reform's demographic is nostalgic for the seventies, because they were young then as well.

After all, Nigel can hardly deny what he said and did, and he can't really go down the "I said it and I regret it", because Reform Social Conservatism is that you shouldn't regret words, no matter how hurty.

The rest of it is standard schoolboy bluster- "you can't tell me off because you're such a hypocrite..."

I was brought up in a Jewish part of London in the 1960s and 1970s. 'Gas them all' and similar thoughts were never ever uttered either to Jewish people or, in my experience, in private 'banter'. It would have marked you out as abnormal. The great majority of us were brought up on stories from our father about serving in the war against fascism.

Sounds like a pretty efficient grift to me.

Why did President Trump pardon someone his own Justice Department indicted five months ago?
https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1996421828366266648

(1500 pardons and counting, this term.
Which is already 10x the total of his first term.)

They really need to change the Pardon system. Maybe give a president ten free hits per term so they really have to think about who they give to as they might need some at the end of term.

Alternatively continue the unlimited amount but make them subject to public scrutiny on reasoning and a vote of approval by one or both houses.

The purchasing of pardons (otherwise known as indulgences) was the first precipitating cause of the Reformation in, IIRC, 1517.