Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
And should there be a forced silence from politicians if businesses choose to be 'unwoke'?
Forced ?
Okay let's use the word principled. Is it okay for politicians to ever offer opinions on how businesses operate their affairs?
Sure it is. I think in this case, Sunak’s opinion is just irrelevant pandering to a particular audience, but no reason he can’t do that.
I took CHB’s comment as his opinion on what Sunak ought to do, which is also fair enough.
I'm guessing his spokesperson was asked a question.
My own feeling is a lot of lot of liberals/leftists are simply angry at this being exploited by the right because they know how silly it is but are too cowardly to speak up about it. However the government really ought to be focusing on the things it is responsible for like sorting out the nonsense in our universities and making sure intellectual rigour is maintained.
What's "the nonsense in our universities"? I'm currently on site at a university and experiencing only normal levels of nonsense (stupid admin, dodgy VLEs). Maintaining my intellectual rigour with regular visits to PB
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
So you're saying political affiliation is more of a bathtub curve with age rather than the slow move rightwards we've all accepted for so long?
I can understand removing the n word but no longer describing Augustus Gloop as fat? It just seems silly. Anyway I have gone as far down the rabbit hole as I'd like and time to do some drawing.
You keep saying this. She isn't. Reads like she wants to encourage business growth and a booming economy and then share the proceeds of growth. That's centre left at best - Cameronism / Orange Bookism. Not right wing where your lot wanted slash and burn business growth where the proceeds of growth would be shared with their patron's BVI bank accounts.
Can you see the difference?
The later is a stereotype of the Right used by those who want to claim they are on the Left, while promoting capitalist growth.
What is wrong with capitalism? Or growth? Remember that capitalism drove so much of the societal changes that modernised the world. Business owners literally building houses, shops, whole towns for their workforce. The circulation of a growing pile of money which they can profit from whilst everyone benefits
What the Tories represent isn't capitalism. Its Spivism. The extraction of a growing pile of money whilst everyone else suffers.
If the Tories represented pure capitalism there would be no NHS, all healthcare would be provided by private health insurance companies. There would be no non contributory welfare state either and no public housing. All schools would be private not state funded and paid for by fees.
Taxes would be being slashed now and an axe taken to public spending and regulations.
In reality the Tories have never been pure capitalist, even under Thatcher and Truss and certainly not now. They have just been more capitalist than socialist or social democrat and Labour the reverse while not being pure socialist either
There would also be much less rampaging corruption in the government.
Because the Tories would not be anywhere near office. HY can give his list of whatabaouts, but they need to win elections. And nobody will vote for any of that.
But yes, lets talk about how bad the Tories *could* be to try and distract away from the open corruption that has destroyed the party.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I think children crave stability and a constancy as to how the world works. When you’re trying to work everything out, that comfy conservative worldview is attractive. I think you’ve hit on something there.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
There are two things that are discussed on here in great depth that I never, ever hear discussed IRL. We don't need to dwell on what that implies about my parochial milieu compared to the learned, worldly-wise and sophisticated denizens of this humble site.
The first, as I've commented on here before, is cricket. I don't know anyone who gives a damn. Never played it at school. There is cricket club in Knottingley, where I live, and local leagues but I don't know anyone involved in any way. Or not in these immediate environs. I know a couple of folk from the distant lands of Cleckhuddersfax who indulge in the strange rites and obscure rituals, but that's about it.
The second is Scottish independence and the SNP. Never hear anyone talking about it. A little bit when they had the referendum, but that's it. And there's loads of Scots round here 'cos of the pits. Yet it fills page after page here, arouses real passions from all comers. I'm totally meh. If they go, they go. If they stay, they stay. I don't particularly want them to go, but I wouldn't blame them if they did, particularly since Brexit. If they want another referendum, let them have one, for me. I don't think I would view it as a national humiliation, an emasculation, if they go. But maybe, if it actually came to pass, I would. Who knows?
There used to be a third - 'wokery' - but that's percolating into real life now, now the Mail et al are pushing it so much. It was weird when I first heard my mum use it, pejoratively of course, some months ago, in relation to the Colston statue, how 'they' want to rob us of our identity, our history. Twenty years ago she gave me a book called 'Bloody Foreigners', about how immigration had been so beneficial for us as country. A sad indictment of how Facebook can bend a previously left-leaning retired teacher with too much time on her hands slowly rightwards. Bless her.
Not quite sure what point I'm slowly meandering toward. Probably none at all.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Shows the futility of trying to inject politics into literary arguments. They eventually become so confused that no one really knows which side they were supposed to be on.
Speak for yourself. Rushdie (glad he's doing okay) basically agrees with Sunak.
There are two things that are discussed on here in great depth that I never, ever hear discussed IRL. We don't need to dwell on what that implies about my parochial milieu compared to the learned, worldly-wise and sophisticated denizens of this humble site.
The first, as I've commented on here before, is cricket. I don't know anyone who gives a damn. Never played it at school. There is cricket club in Knottingley, where I live, and local leagues but I don't know anyone involved in any way. Or not in these immediate environs. I know a couple of folk from the distant lands of Cleckhuddersfax who indulge in the strange rites and obscure rituals, but that's about it.
The second is Scottish independence and the SNP. Never hear anyone talking about it. A little bit when they had the referendum, but that's it. And there's loads of Scots round here 'cos of the pits. Yet it fills page after page here, arouses real passions from all comers. I'm totally meh. If they go, they go. If they stay, they stay. I don't particularly want them to go, but I wouldn't blame them if they did, particularly since Brexit. If they want another referendum, let them have one, for me. I don't think I would view it as a national humiliation, an emasculation, if they go. But maybe, if it actually came to pass, I would. Who knows?
There used to be a third - 'wokery' - but that's percolating into real life now, now the Mail et al are pushing it so much. It was weird when I first heard my mum use it, pejoratively of course, some months ago, in relation to the Colston statue, how 'they' want to rob us of our identity, our history. Twenty years ago she gave me a book called 'Bloody Foreigners', about how immigration had been so beneficial for us a country. A sad indictment of how Facebook can bend a previously left-leaning retired teacher with too much time on her hands slowly rightwards. Bless her.
Not quite sure what point I'm slowly meandering toward. Probably none at all.
Carry on.
Totally agreed. In London wokeism is a net negative for any party obsessed with it. Independence is irrelevant.
You as a barometer of the North, suggests that the Tories are losing.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
So you're saying political affiliation is more of a bathtub curve with age rather than the slow move rightwards we've all accepted for so long?
Absolutely. It's been disguised by the lack of polling of the under-ten demographic. The rightwards drift in old age is just another manifestation of what Shakespeare's Jaques calls "second childishness".
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
If Forbes wins will the Greens crash the power share arrangement?
Maybe we'll have an interesting Scottish Parliament election to get our teeth into this spring?
Wouldn't that be exciting?
If Forbes wins, hopefully the SNP will crash the power share agreement. If Forbes wins, will they still be any point in Alba continuing?
as the point of alba seems to have been an ego trip for Salmond’s hurt feelings, mere changes of policy won’t affect its continuation.
A real Scotch opinion extrodinaire there.
Are you saying that Salmond didn't launch it because he was mad at Sturgeon?
If so, why would you think that?
He launched it because he wants independence. Mad would not begin to describe the fit up she tried just because he was going to come back into politics. If only he would get the full story published, but he has put personal view to one side, would be front page for weeks if not months.
Jordan Peterson is a dick, the never ending story. Anyone got a clue what 'toxically feminine' is, too much cloying perfume or excessively lacy underwear?
Certainly toxic but nothing to do with being a woman.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Shows the futility of trying to inject politics into literary arguments. They eventually become so confused that no one really knows which side they were supposed to be on.
Speak for yourself. Rushdie (glad he's doing okay) basically agrees with Sunak.
So what?
Sunak is a politician who claims to believe in free markets.
If companies want to become woke for profit then they can. That’s up to them.
Presumably you’d be okay with Sunak making comments about how a company should run in other senses? What about telling them what sort of people they should hire or what objectives they should have.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
So you're saying political affiliation is more of a bathtub curve with age rather than the slow move rightwards we've all accepted for so long?
I find myself getting more left wing as I get older. When I was very young I was a libertarian young fogey but the more I see of the world the more I see how shit the version of market capitalism we’ve been saddled with really is.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
So you're saying political affiliation is more of a bathtub curve with age rather than the slow move rightwards we've all accepted for so long?
I find myself getting more left wing as I get older. When I was very young I was a libertarian young fogey but the more I see of the world the more I see how shit the version of market capitalism we’ve been saddled with really is.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The pm wants the books to be left as they were written by the author! What a bastard!!!!
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The pm wants the books to be left as they were written by the author! What a bastard!!!!
Her'd better complain to Mr Dahl then. Ouija board this way.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
My mum tried to read Danny Champion of the World to me on a long train journey but when we got to the bit about his mum dying I started crying and wouldn't stop for the rest of the journey, apparently.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The pm wants the books to be left as they were written by the author! What a bastard!!!!
If he had top marks in his day job, then maybe he might have time to wade into this (it would still not be wise). But the economy, strikes, Ukraine, healthcare, infrastructure, Northern Ireland and many other areas need his attention far more.
He is only going for a cheap win on this because he has insufficient answers/political capital on the above. A weak PM who sadly disappoints, I thought he would be fine, at least by comparison with his recent predecessors.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
It seems like a dumb thing to do but is presumably driven by commercial motivations - ie wanting to keep selling the books to as wide a range of people as possible. Way back in the 1980s when my mum was doing teacher training she remembers they noted some difficult aspects to the books, eg how do you read the books to a class of children with overweight kids in the class when they equate being overweight to being greedy, lacking in self control etc and could make it more likely the kid gets bullied? My own feeling with Dahl's books is they are very well written and really appeal to children but certainly have some problematic features. We have them at home and certainly didn't ban them but would talk about some of the aspects of the books that didn't sit right with us with the kids. They are intelligent enough to make up their own mind. I think it's weird that Sunak is getting involved. I'm sure he has better things to be getting on with.
Frankly, I've never liked Roald Dahl's books. I think they're both unpleasant and somewhat disturbing. That's the plotlines, not the characters so much. About the only one I really enjoyed was Matilda, and even that has its moments.
But there's 'not liking something' and 'bowdlerising.' Should we ban the The Wife of Bath's Prologue as well because it shows marital violence and sexual exploitation? Or Titus Andronicus because it promotes cannibalism?
Yes it feels like an unnecessary interference in the text - people can make up their own minds. But presumably it is being driven by commercial motivations - the owners of the copyright want to sell more books to more people by removing a few elements that some people might not like. That feels wrong but it's their property. One can certainly think of precedents, eg the title of And Then There Were None was only changed in UK editions in 1985, several years after Agatha Christine's death - I'm presuming that most people are okay with that? Would anyone buy it for their kids to read with the original title? I don't think I would.
Companies taking stupid commercial decisions is nothing new, and this seems like one of them.
As to what children like, well, that's obvious, as Dominic Sandbrook explained in "The Vikings' War on Woke." They enjoy poking fun at authority figures they detest, based (among other things) on their physical appearance. They like to read about horrible things being done to bullies, snobs, and sneaks. They like gore, bloodshed, and depictions of medieval torture techniques etc. What they very much dislike, however, is cruelty to animals.
Bear those things in mind, and you should be okay writing childrens' literature.
I'm tempted to back Regan. I have a cheeky £1 on Cherry at 100.
I put my fiver on Reagan at 66/1
Only back Useless if confirmed that Murrell's are doing the count otherwise thedumb sockpuppet is doomed.
Who do you want to see win Malc?
For sure not that useless git Yousaf. Not 100% sure on Forbes given she has just done what Sturgeon ordered , Regan at least had the guts to resign and tell them to stick theit GRR policy and is very independence minded. So Regan first choice , Forbes unknown alternative who may be ok and get rid of the Sturgeon candidate Yousaf, if anybody could make matters worse it is that clown.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Able Seaman Titty, Roger the Ship's Boy, and Salty Seaman.
I do think Arthur Ransome was having some fun, there.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The pm wants the books to be left as they were written by the author! What a bastard!!!!
If he had top marks in his day job, then maybe he might have time to wade into this (it would still not be wise). But the economy, strikes, Ukraine, healthcare, infrastructure, Northern Ireland and many other areas need his attention far more.
He is only going for a cheap win on this because he has insufficient answers/political capital on the above. A weak PM who sadly disappoints, I thought he would be fine, at least by comparison with his recent predecessors.
He wouldn't be wise to wade into anything too deeply.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
[Blyton] gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
Crikey. You're me! Can I claim my £5?
We're not at that point yet (eldest is in reception) but I don't think I'll rush out to buy Blyton for my kids. Maybe I will/or they'll get into Blyton through other means, we'll see. I'd always assumed there's similar stuff around now without all the dated societal oddities.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
The patriarchy, white supremacy, and lashings of ginger beer!
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. For embarrassingly bad attempts at it see Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
Yes it was probably closer to generic Estuary English. The mouse is an attractive chancer who lives by his wits, I was trying to channel a kind of Artful Dodger/young Delboy vibe but probably failing.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
I think that describes a pretty broad consensus on the issue. No one wants Shakespeare’s Befriending of the Small Rodent.
As for his anti-Welsh remarks in the History plays...
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
For some reason that reminds me of Ray Winstone playing Henry VIII. Some people were appalled - I rather like the idea of Henry as the Top Dog In The Mana'
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
It seems like a dumb thing to do but is presumably driven by commercial motivations - ie wanting to keep selling the books to as wide a range of people as possible. Way back in the 1980s when my mum was doing teacher training she remembers they noted some difficult aspects to the books, eg how do you read the books to a class of children with overweight kids in the class when they equate being overweight to being greedy, lacking in self control etc and could make it more likely the kid gets bullied? My own feeling with Dahl's books is they are very well written and really appeal to children but certainly have some problematic features. We have them at home and certainly didn't ban them but would talk about some of the aspects of the books that didn't sit right with us with the kids. They are intelligent enough to make up their own mind. I think it's weird that Sunak is getting involved. I'm sure he has better things to be getting on with.
Frankly, I've never liked Roald Dahl's books. I think they're both unpleasant and somewhat disturbing. That's the plotlines, not the characters so much. About the only one I really enjoyed was Matilda, and even that has its moments.
But there's 'not liking something' and 'bowdlerising.' Should we ban the The Wife of Bath's Prologue as well because it shows marital violence and sexual exploitation? Or Titus Andronicus because it promotes cannibalism?
People expect children's books to be safe spaces. Given Dahl is somewhat problematic, I think three options for the publisher, none of which is ideal:
Do nothing
Edit the most contentious bits
No longer market the books as mainstream children's literature
Editing doesn't really work from the examples I have seen. The genius of Dahl is in his juxtaposition and turn of phrase. These get lost in his edits. In any case he was a provocatively non-PC writer even back in the day. I think it would be a shame to lose him as a children's writer but people will make up their own minds, I guess
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
Again, I'm a whole level down from here, but I enjoy the exaggerated Welsh accents I can do in Fireman Sam books (lived in Wales for a time and I absorb accents*, so it comes quite easily) and I model the Fat Controller on my brother in law who looks a bit similar and is broad as they come Yorkshire.
*I once worked a summer in a shop with a load of Irish nurses. Towards the end an Irish customer asked me what part of Ireland I was from as he couldn't place my accent (which, by then, was a mix of everyone else's accents, I guess).
In general, childrens' literature is quite tame compared to the 19th century.
This, from The Sight of Hell, by Father Joseph Furniss, was a jolly bed time read in 1850:-
"Ps. xx. Thou shalt make him as an oven of fire in the time of thy anger.
You are going to see again the child about which you read in the Terrible Judgement, that it was condemned to hell. See! It is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell—despair, desperate and horrible! The same law which is for others is also for children. If children, knowingly and willingly, break God’s commandments, they must also be punished like others. This child committed very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what it was doing, and knowing that hell would be the punishment. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood."
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
Loved them, though variable, critics at the time thought adults would enjoy them too - rightly. Some of them date more than others.
Secret Water is one of the dullest books ever written, while Pigeon Post is a stellar exercise in pitch perfect novel construction. Tight, thrilling, not a single wasted or redundant word.
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
It just ain't a natural way to talk.
Criticism of Audrey Hepburn! We could fall out!
Actually I thought she did her flower lady quite well. She didn't try to capture the east-end accent but just the slight abrasiveness of it.
'My Fair Lady' is probably my favourite film though.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
The version of Uncle Tom's Cabin that removed the slavery and the racism was interesting, though.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The pm wants the books to be left as they were written by the author! What a bastard!!!!
If he had top marks in his day job, then maybe he might have time to wade into this (it would still not be wise). But the economy, strikes, Ukraine, healthcare, infrastructure, Northern Ireland and many other areas need his attention far more.
He is only going for a cheap win on this because he has insufficient answers/political capital on the above. A weak PM who sadly disappoints, I thought he would be fine, at least by comparison with his recent predecessors.
Doesn't look like he will push through the NI Protocol agreement.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
It seems like a dumb thing to do but is presumably driven by commercial motivations - ie wanting to keep selling the books to as wide a range of people as possible. Way back in the 1980s when my mum was doing teacher training she remembers they noted some difficult aspects to the books, eg how do you read the books to a class of children with overweight kids in the class when they equate being overweight to being greedy, lacking in self control etc and could make it more likely the kid gets bullied? My own feeling with Dahl's books is they are very well written and really appeal to children but certainly have some problematic features. We have them at home and certainly didn't ban them but would talk about some of the aspects of the books that didn't sit right with us with the kids. They are intelligent enough to make up their own mind. I think it's weird that Sunak is getting involved. I'm sure he has better things to be getting on with.
Frankly, I've never liked Roald Dahl's books. I think they're both unpleasant and somewhat disturbing. That's the plotlines, not the characters so much. About the only one I really enjoyed was Matilda, and even that has its moments.
But there's 'not liking something' and 'bowdlerising.' Should we ban the The Wife of Bath's Prologue as well because it shows marital violence and sexual exploitation? Or Titus Andronicus because it promotes cannibalism?
Well that, I'm afraid, is just sick.
Danny the Champion of the World is an outstanding work.
As is Fantastic Mr Fox, Boy, and Going Solo. There's very little wrong with James and the Giant Peach either. Indeed, fuck it, his whole body of work is pretty bloody outstanding.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
And it's hardly a matter for the PM to involve himself in - although we sadly know why he thinks otherwise.
In general, childrens' literature is quite tame compared to the 19th century.
This, from The Sight of Hell, by Father Joseph Furniss, was a jolly bed time read in 1850:-
"Ps. xx. Thou shalt make him as an oven of fire in the time of thy anger.
You are going to see again the child about which you read in the Terrible Judgement, that it was condemned to hell. See! It is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell—despair, desperate and horrible! The same law which is for others is also for children. If children, knowingly and willingly, break God’s commandments, they must also be punished like others. This child committed very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what it was doing, and knowing that hell would be the punishment. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood."
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
I think that describes a pretty broad consensus on the issue. No one wants Shakespeare’s Befriending of the Small Rodent.
Largely agreed ... but an exception would be Conrad's 'The N---- of the Narcissus"
Where the title actually puts people off. The book is a masterpiece.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
The version of Uncle Tom's Cabin that removed the slavery and the racism was interesting, though.
It's just modern day religion. Choose a story, any story, and then adjust history, facts, or whatever's needed.
It's not as if our children are somehow incapable of understanding things within the context of their times. Just horrible to hide or disguise these matters. (And actually mostly just plain wrong in their retrospective judgements)
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
And it's hardly a matter for the PM to involve himself in
He was asked a question. If he hadn't answered it, you and CHB would have been criticising him for that as well.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
When I did my articles, we had a blind partner, and the articled clerks would read out documents to him. I remember one of them had a fit of the giggles when she was reading out an old lease that kept referring to "erections."
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
From Dick, presumably.
Is that character 'Richard' in latest editions?
Anyway, female ejaculations were, surprisingly, also present (as far as I recall).
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
It seems like a dumb thing to do but is presumably driven by commercial motivations - ie wanting to keep selling the books to as wide a range of people as possible. Way back in the 1980s when my mum was doing teacher training she remembers they noted some difficult aspects to the books, eg how do you read the books to a class of children with overweight kids in the class when they equate being overweight to being greedy, lacking in self control etc and could make it more likely the kid gets bullied? My own feeling with Dahl's books is they are very well written and really appeal to children but certainly have some problematic features. We have them at home and certainly didn't ban them but would talk about some of the aspects of the books that didn't sit right with us with the kids. They are intelligent enough to make up their own mind. I think it's weird that Sunak is getting involved. I'm sure he has better things to be getting on with.
Frankly, I've never liked Roald Dahl's books. I think they're both unpleasant and somewhat disturbing. That's the plotlines, not the characters so much. About the only one I really enjoyed was Matilda, and even that has its moments.
But there's 'not liking something' and 'bowdlerising.' Should we ban the The Wife of Bath's Prologue as well because it shows marital violence and sexual exploitation? Or Titus Andronicus because it promotes cannibalism?
Well that, I'm afraid, is just sick.
Danny the Champion of the World is an outstanding work.
As is Fantastic Mr Fox, Boy, and Going Solo. There's very little wrong with James and the Giant Peach either. Indeed, fuck it, his whole body of work is pretty bloody outstanding.
I somewhat agree with @ydoethur. There is a seam of cynicism running through Dahl's work. I forgive a lot of people who make me laugh. As a writer Dahl was a genius.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. For embarrassingly bad attempts at it see Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
Yes it was probably closer to generic Estuary English. The mouse is an attractive chancer who lives by his wits, I was trying to channel a kind of Artful Dodger/young Delboy vibe but probably failing.
No shame in that.
In fact some of the more popular stage Cockneys are somewhat wide of the mark. Delboy is of course Sarf London (Peckham) and Barbara Windsor is too hammy to be real. Ray Winstone is authentic, as is Stanley Holloway (with added theatrical panache.)
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
The version of Uncle Tom's Cabin that removed the slavery and the racism was interesting, though.
It's just modern day religion. Choose a story, any story, and then adjust history, facts, or whatever's needed.
It's not as if our children are somehow incapable of understanding things within the context of their times. Just horrible to hide or disguise these matters. (And actually mostly just plain wrong in their retrospective judgements)
It was just the idea of taking that story and removing.... the whole story. Why do that? The mind that did that, how did they think? - I find trying to work that out fascinating.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Able Seaman Titty, Roger the Ship's Boy, and Salty Seaman.
I do think Arthur Ransome was having some fun, there.
Er, conflating the S&A with a different crew (and as an expensive court case proved, a nonexistent one)!
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
The version of Uncle Tom's Cabin that removed the slavery and the racism was interesting, though.
I know that a lot of people can't bear to read Flash for Freedom, which I think is one of the most brutally honest portrayals of just how vile The Middle Passage was.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
As a chap of a certain age, and a voracious reader when young, I was brought up reading the entire canon of unsound, non-PC stuff and enjoyed it all tremendously, though not uncritically. Blyton, Dahl, Buckeridge (Jennings and Derbyshire), Just William, W.E. Johns (Biggles, Ginger and Algy), and many, many more infiltrated my young. susceptible mind.
And yet here I am, retired, a woke liberal leftie, safely immune (I'd claim) from anti-semitism, racism, sexism and misogyny, and from using nasty words to describe people's personality or physical traits.
It's absolute nonsense to rewrite literature, and it's absolute nonsense to issue trigger warnings and stuff like that. Let history be, and teach people to understand the context in which stuff was written, whether that be Blyton or Shakespeare.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Able Seaman Titty, Roger the Ship's Boy, and Salty Seaman.
I do think Arthur Ransome was having some fun, there.
Er, conflating the S&A with a different crew (and as an expensive court case proved, a nonexistent one)!
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
And it's hardly a matter for the PM to involve himself in
He was asked a question. If he hadn't answered it, you and CHB would have been criticising him for that as well.
I can assure you I wouldn't. I give credit where it's due. Eg if he does the NI deal and tells Johnson and the ERG where to go that will be due some credit and I'll make a point of giving it to him. There'll be a glowing 3 para post. You can hold me to this. I'm Mr Fair Play.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
My mum gave me a golly when I was small, bought it in antique shop I think. It had yellow hair. I remember being very very small and staring at it and not liking it.
I still got all those old things in a container in the old pig house roof. When i’m next up there I’ll photograph it so you can see how scary it is.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On the censorship/revision point we should possibly point out that this isn’t something that new. The original name for And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie was changed some time ago for instance.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
The version of Uncle Tom's Cabin that removed the slavery and the racism was interesting, though.
It's just modern day religion. Choose a story, any story, and then adjust history, facts, or whatever's needed.
It's not as if our children are somehow incapable of understanding things within the context of their times. Just horrible to hide or disguise these matters. (And actually mostly just plain wrong in their retrospective judgements)
It was just the idea of taking that story and removing.... the whole story. Why do that? The mind that did that, how did they think? - I find trying to work that out fascinating.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
It just ain't a natural way to talk.
Criticism of Audrey Hepburn! We could fall out!
Actually I thought she did her flower lady quite well. She didn't try to capture the east-end accent but just the slight abrasiveness of it.
'My Fair Lady' is probably my favourite film though.
Compare her artificial performance to the heart-wrenching Wendy Hiller in Pygmalion (1938).
Hepburn never looks like a "draggle-tailed gutter-snipe". She looks like a fashion model, pretending to be one.
Hiller does look like a guttersnipe, making her transformation into a lady astonishing.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Able Seaman Titty, Roger the Ship's Boy, and Salty Seaman.
I do think Arthur Ransome was having some fun, there.
Er, conflating the S&A with a different crew (and as an expensive court case proved, a nonexistent one)!
These are *not* characters from Captain Pugwash.
That is the point re the court case. Pugwash postdated S&A so it's not that.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
It just ain't a natural way to talk.
Criticism of Audrey Hepburn! We could fall out!
Actually I thought she did her flower lady quite well. She didn't try to capture the east-end accent but just the slight abrasiveness of it.
'My Fair Lady' is probably my favourite film though.
No danger, Omnium. I'm totally with you on AH, but it's little more than a token effort and since language and class was central to the story you have to acknowledge she was miscast in this instance.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
Dahl and Tolkien both edited their own works, of course. Often very extensively.
But I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea of other people doing it. All other considerations aside, if they do that arguably it's not really the author's work and should have somebody else's name on it as well. Like that horror, the abridged novel.
If a publisher thinks a story is inappropriate for modern tastes and sensibilities, nobody is forcing them to sell it.
Iirc, the Jennings books were - very lightly - edited in the 80s to change some of the language.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
You can have immense fun with quotations from literature, containing all sorts of words that have changed their meaning over the years.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Lots of ejaculations in the Blyton books too, as I recall.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
It just ain't a natural way to talk.
Criticism of Audrey Hepburn! We could fall out!
Actually I thought she did her flower lady quite well. She didn't try to capture the east-end accent but just the slight abrasiveness of it.
'My Fair Lady' is probably my favourite film though.
No danger, Omnium. I'm totally with you of AH, but it's little more than a token effort and since language and class was central to the story you have to acknowledge she was miscast in this instance.
More importantly she was miscast as it was a musical and she didn't have a good singing voice! They should have stuck with Julie Andrews, who played Eliza in the stage production. It is a cracking musical though.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Eugh. The very very worst kids books ever - Mallory Towers, St Clares and all the other books that reinforced that only posh kids going to the right schools were worth anything. Having a gender-fluid character in the Famous Five not enough to save her, because George like the rest of them was a ponce, gender fluid or not.
The thing is that Dahl and Blyton are very popular with children. The Rev Awdrey too - whose books are clearly authoritarian propaganda disguised as nice stories about trains (I loved them as a kid). I think the explanation is that children are inherently right wing - they are afraid of anything unfamiliar, they think the world revolves around them and they tend to view the world as a simplistic fight between good and evil. Most of us grow out of this mindset and develop different reading habits and political views as we get older.
I have a soft spot for Blyton's books as my mother read them too me when I was small and very ill in bed with a combination of chicken pox and food poisoning. Though I do remember us both laughing at some of the more obvious social ticks she had when describing characters.
Blyton's books are usually an exciting read, albeit a touch formulaic. Her snobbery is absolutely hilarious though, and is one reason why her books are so camp and spoofable.
It was finding a copy of Five on a Hike Together in a bag ready to go to charity at my Grandma's house sometime in the early 80s - the first 'proper' book I ever read, alone and unguided, without pictures on every page - that gave me a lifelong love of books and reading. After I'd devoured a ton of Blyton stuff I then shifted to the Just William books.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
I enjoyed reading those sorts of Blyton books to my children (and Roald Dahl) because they are fun to read out loud. I tended to adopt various comedy accents for the characters, and read the Blyton narrator voice in an archaic manner with lashings of vocal ginger beer. It’s very clearly fiction and not real life, but the little world it creates is compelling. The famous five gave me a lifelong excitement at the idea of small West Country coves and mysterious offshore islands.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
Swallows and Amazons for me, complete with Titty and Roger. And the two very idnependent young ladies, Nancy and I forget the other.
Peggy!
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
The accents of the local characters are a bit trickier as Cumbrian dialect isn’t as easy to master as the combination of West Country burr and Ray Winstone cockney criminal required for the average friendly local / baddie in famous 5.
I used to deploy a range of accents when I read to the kids. For some reason I always did the Gruffalo as a Glaswegian, while the mouse was a crafty Cockney. The youngest one still likes to have the Katie Morag books read to her in full-on Scottish. Grannie Mainland, who is a bit posh, always ends up sounding like she's from Morningside, even though I'm pretty sure she's a Weegie.
True Cockney is very difficult to imitate. Notably embarrassing attempts include Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
It just ain't a natural way to talk.
Criticism of Audrey Hepburn! We could fall out!
Actually I thought she did her flower lady quite well. She didn't try to capture the east-end accent but just the slight abrasiveness of it.
'My Fair Lady' is probably my favourite film though.
No danger, Omnium. I'm totally with you of AH, but it's little more than a token effort and since language and class was central to the story you have to acknowledge she was miscast in this instance.
I'm not sure I do agree. AH, Rex Harrison and Wilfred Hyde-Whyte make that film shine in a way that few others do. She would have been miscast of the other two hadn't put on such an incredible performance to make her seem as she was cast.
Stanley Holloway (had to look it up but I'd have got his name eventually) was clearly not of the East End, and yet he captured something.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
Noddy has already had the woke treatment. I’m sure it vexes some. Not me.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
My mum gave me a golly when I was small, bought it in antique shop I think. It had yellow hair. I remember being very very small and staring at it and not liking it.
I still got all those old things in a container in the old pig house roof. When i’m next up there I’ll photograph it so you can see how scary it is.
Like this.
Who in the right mind thought it cool giving something like this to a kid? Even looking at it as an adult you could base a horror movie franchise around it.
Why is the Government getting involved in how private organisations conduct their affairs?
I don't think Rishi is that much of a market fundamentalist. And anyway I don't think he's getting involved, merely offering an opinion. A subtle difference which seems to be lost nowadays.
Why does he have an opinion? He should stay out of how private companies choose to operate. If they want to be "woke" then that's up to them.
People don’t forfeit the right to express opinions, upon entering politics.
Having the right to do something is not the same as it being sensible to exercise that right, or not to expect criticism for doing so.
A PM getting involved in how books are written feels quite off to me, like something one would expect in a very religious or authoritarian state.
Has he not got enough on his plate on more important things anyway?
The Woke Wars are the most important things for Tories. Just think about the dog in the Dambusters.
This really isn’t much about woke, though. And the attempts to say it’s good for the Tories / bad for Starmer are just risible.
The real politician censors tend to be on the political extremes - see much of the current GOP, as an example.
Eh? Isn't it? It's certainly being regarded as more wokery in PB.
Not really. There are plenty of liberals around who think Dahl was kind of a bigoted dick (rightly or wrongly), but regard messing with authors’ work in this way as an outrage.
Who are the public figures defending the Bowdlerisers ?
It seems like a dumb thing to do but is presumably driven by commercial motivations - ie wanting to keep selling the books to as wide a range of people as possible. Way back in the 1980s when my mum was doing teacher training she remembers they noted some difficult aspects to the books, eg how do you read the books to a class of children with overweight kids in the class when they equate being overweight to being greedy, lacking in self control etc and could make it more likely the kid gets bullied? My own feeling with Dahl's books is they are very well written and really appeal to children but certainly have some problematic features. We have them at home and certainly didn't ban them but would talk about some of the aspects of the books that didn't sit right with us with the kids. They are intelligent enough to make up their own mind. I think it's weird that Sunak is getting involved. I'm sure he has better things to be getting on with.
Frankly, I've never liked Roald Dahl's books. I think they're both unpleasant and somewhat disturbing. That's the plotlines, not the characters so much. About the only one I really enjoyed was Matilda, and even that has its moments.
But there's 'not liking something' and 'bowdlerising.' Should we ban the The Wife of Bath's Prologue as well because it shows marital violence and sexual exploitation? Or Titus Andronicus because it promotes cannibalism?
Well that, I'm afraid, is just sick.
Danny the Champion of the World is an outstanding work.
As is Fantastic Mr Fox, Boy, and Going Solo. There's very little wrong with James and the Giant Peach either. Indeed, fuck it, his whole body of work is pretty bloody outstanding.
His work varies tremendously. DTCOTW and JATGP are both wonderful, happy and uplifting. Whereas the Twits, for example, is disturbing and unpleasant.
It tends to depend on how quickly the cartoonishly unpleasant characters (such as Aunts Spiker and Sponge) can be got out of the way.
Roald Dahl, though, is one of the few writers who can both plot well and write well. His language is a joy. I don't mind the replacement of an odd word whose once-benign meaning has become anachronistic, if it can be done without changing the meter, but I'd lament a rewrite to fit in with modern sensitivities. (I recently read DTCOTW to my daughter, and was struck by how it wouldn't be written now. Not any of the major modern transgressions, but: - poaching presented as a good thing, at least in that the poacher gets to eat tasty meat - a small boy driving a car presented as somewhat heroic - stoicism presented as a virtue)
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
My mum gave me a golly when I was small, bought it in antique shop I think. It had yellow hair. I remember being very very small and staring at it and not liking it.
I still got all those old things in a container in the old pig house roof. When i’m next up there I’ll photograph it so you can see how scary it is.
Like this.
Who in the right mind thought it cool giving something like this to a kid? Even looking at it as an adult you could base a horror movie franchise around it.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
My mum gave me a golly when I was small, bought it in antique shop I think. It had yellow hair. I remember being very very small and staring at it and not liking it.
I still got all those old things in a container in the old pig house roof. When i’m next up there I’ll photograph it so you can see how scary it is.
Like this.
Who in the right mind thought it cool giving something like this to a kid? Even looking at it as an adult you could base a horror movie franchise around it.
On topic, she has a lovely lilt and she's quite telegenic. So both ticks in this age where sound and sight seem to be so important.
And well done to her team for finding such rare blue sky footage over the Cuillins.
All-in-all a very slick video launch.
Lilt’s been rebranded so it’s “…she has a lovely Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit…” if you’re being pedantic
Political Correctness gone mad: "Correcting" Roald Dahl classics to impose 2023 morals on books written generations earlier. Political Correctness not gone mad: ditching the "yeah mon" faux Caribbean branding because sales have died and it needs a relaunch that won't piss off the target audience.
What about Enid Blyton and Noddy?
Golly!
My mum gave me a golly when I was small, bought it in antique shop I think. It had yellow hair. I remember being very very small and staring at it and not liking it.
I still got all those old things in a container in the old pig house roof. When i’m next up there I’ll photograph it so you can see how scary it is.
Like this.
Who in the right mind thought it cool giving something like this to a kid? Even looking at it as an adult you could base a horror movie franchise around it.
It's like one of those horrifying shrunken Cambodian foetuses in The Bible of the Dead, that's used in the diabolical arts.
Comments
But yes, lets talk about how bad the Tories *could* be to try and distract away from the open corruption that has destroyed the party.
The first, as I've commented on here before, is cricket. I don't know anyone who gives a damn. Never played it at school. There is cricket club in Knottingley, where I live, and local leagues but I don't know anyone involved in any way. Or not in these immediate environs. I know a couple of folk from the distant lands of Cleckhuddersfax who indulge in the strange rites and obscure rituals, but that's about it.
The second is Scottish independence and the SNP. Never hear anyone talking about it. A little bit when they had the referendum, but that's it. And there's loads of Scots round here 'cos of the pits. Yet it fills page after page here, arouses real passions from all comers. I'm totally meh. If they go, they go. If they stay, they stay. I don't particularly want them to go, but I wouldn't blame them if they did, particularly since Brexit. If they want another referendum, let them have one, for me. I don't think I would view it as a national humiliation, an emasculation, if they go. But maybe, if it actually came to pass, I would. Who knows?
There used to be a third - 'wokery' - but that's percolating into real life now, now the Mail et al are pushing it so much. It was weird when I first heard my mum use it, pejoratively of course, some months ago, in relation to the Colston statue, how 'they' want to rob us of our identity, our history. Twenty years ago she gave me a book called 'Bloody Foreigners', about how immigration had been so beneficial for us as country. A sad indictment of how Facebook can bend a previously left-leaning retired teacher with too much time on her hands slowly rightwards. Bless her.
Not quite sure what point I'm slowly meandering toward. Probably none at all.
Carry on.
You as a barometer of the North, suggests that the Tories are losing.
https://www.thenational.scot/news/23333763.snp-leadership-humza-yousaf-not-wedded-de-facto-scottish-independence-referendum-plan/
https://youtu.be/BCL_TAPfdAo
Sunak is a politician who claims to believe in free markets.
If companies want to become woke for profit then they can. That’s up to them.
Presumably you’d be okay with Sunak making comments about how a company should run in other senses? What about telling them what sort of people they should hire or what objectives they should have.
He should stay out. It’s none of his business.
I'm no professional Yorkshireman, but they painted a very different world to the one I grew up in. A little part of me will always wish I went to boarding school. Which is weird because another, much bigger, part of me would like to see private education abolished.
Danny the Champion of the world was my first self-read book and its motifs live with me to this day, including a rather unwarranted feeling about the deliciousness of pheasant.
The politics of Swallow and Amazons is much less troubling. I loved those books when I was little, they were the first proper books I read to myself.
He is only going for a cheap win on this because he has insufficient answers/political capital on the above. A weak PM who sadly disappoints, I thought he would be fine, at least by comparison with his recent predecessors.
As to what children like, well, that's obvious, as Dominic Sandbrook explained in "The Vikings' War on Woke." They enjoy poking fun at authority figures they detest, based (among other things) on their physical appearance. They like to read about horrible things being done to bullies, snobs, and sneaks. They like gore, bloodshed, and depictions of medieval torture techniques etc. What they very much dislike, however, is cruelty to animals.
Bear those things in mind, and you should be okay writing childrens' literature.
I do think Arthur Ransome was having some fun, there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6-YPiqOh_w
We're not at that point yet (eldest is in reception) but I don't think I'll rush out to buy Blyton for my kids. Maybe I will/or they'll get into Blyton through other means, we'll see. I'd always assumed there's similar stuff around now without all the dated societal oddities.
I think it is the glottal stop that is the main problem, whilst the distortion of vowels and arbitrary elimination of certain consonants add to the difficulty.
It just ain't a natural way to talk.
Spank The Monkey Lends A Hand is a much-loved childrens' classic, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnSEebm8Rtc
- Do nothing
- Edit the most contentious bits
- No longer market the books as mainstream children's literature
Editing doesn't really work from the examples I have seen. The genius of Dahl is in his juxtaposition and turn of phrase. These get lost in his edits. In any case he was a provocatively non-PC writer even back in the day. I think it would be a shame to lose him as a children's writer but people will make up their own minds, I guess*I once worked a summer in a shop with a load of Irish nurses. Towards the end an Irish customer asked me what part of Ireland I was from as he couldn't place my accent (which, by then, was a mix of everyone else's accents, I guess).
This, from The Sight of Hell, by Father Joseph Furniss, was a jolly bed time read in 1850:-
"Ps. xx. Thou shalt make him as an oven of fire in the time of thy anger.
You are going to see again the child about which you read in the Terrible Judgement, that it was condemned to hell. See! It is a pitiful sight. The little child is in this red hot oven. Hear how it screams to come out. See how it turns and twists itself about in the fire. It beats its head against the roof of the oven. It stamps its little feet on the floor of the oven. You can see on the face of this little child what you see on the faces of all in hell—despair, desperate and horrible! The same law which is for others is also for children. If children, knowingly and willingly, break God’s commandments, they must also be punished like others. This child committed very bad mortal sins, knowing well the harm of what it was doing, and knowing that hell would be the punishment. God was very good to this child. Very likely God saw that this child would get worse and worse, and would never repent, and so it would have to be punished much more in hell. So God, in His mercy, called it out of the world in its early childhood."
Secret Water is one of the dullest books ever written, while Pigeon Post is a stellar exercise in pitch perfect novel construction. Tight, thrilling, not a single wasted or redundant word.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was also changed from its first edition I believe to remove some rather racially-charged references to Oompa Loompas.
It strikes me as being quite purist to suggest that all literature needs to remain forever frozen in aspic, or otherwise it will be damaged diminished or unacceptably censored. It’s a matter of degree - certainly I think most of us would find it difficult to argue that some of the historic revisions weren’t justifiable in the context of the use of offensive terminology. There is however a balance to be struck and I suspect that balance isn’t quite right here, and hence the indignation from many quarters.
Actually I thought she did her flower lady quite well. She didn't try to capture the east-end accent but just the slight abrasiveness of it.
'My Fair Lady' is probably my favourite film though.
In particular, I think "Matron, I'm feeling rather queer" was changed too something that more explicitly mentioned feeling unwell.
Danny the Champion of the World is an outstanding work.
As is Fantastic Mr Fox, Boy, and Going Solo. There's very little wrong with James and the Giant Peach either. Indeed, fuck it, his whole body of work is pretty bloody outstanding.
So, for example, Mr. Darcy more than once ejaculates to Miss Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
Was it Heaven? Or Hell? - by Mark Twain
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/wihoh.html
Where the title actually puts people off. The book is a masterpiece.
It's not as if our children are somehow incapable of understanding things within the context of their times. Just horrible to hide or disguise these matters. (And actually mostly just plain wrong in their retrospective judgements)
Anyway, female ejaculations were, surprisingly, also present (as far as I recall).
In fact some of the more popular stage Cockneys are somewhat wide of the mark. Delboy is of course Sarf London (Peckham) and Barbara Windsor is too hammy to be real. Ray Winstone is authentic, as is Stanley Holloway (with added theatrical panache.)
And yet here I am, retired, a woke liberal leftie, safely immune (I'd claim) from anti-semitism, racism, sexism and misogyny, and from using nasty words to describe people's personality or physical traits.
It's absolute nonsense to rewrite literature, and it's absolute nonsense to issue trigger warnings and stuff like that. Let history be, and teach people to understand the context in which stuff was written, whether that be Blyton or Shakespeare.
I still got all those old things in a container in the old pig house roof. When i’m next up there I’ll photograph it so you can see how scary it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3E74j_xFtg
Hepburn never looks like a "draggle-tailed gutter-snipe". She looks like a fashion model, pretending to be one.
Hiller does look like a guttersnipe, making her transformation into a lady astonishing.
Stanley Holloway (had to look it up but I'd have got his name eventually) was clearly not of the East End, and yet he captured something.
Who in the right mind thought it cool giving something like this to a kid? Even looking at it as an adult you could base a horror movie franchise around it.
DTCOTW and JATGP are both wonderful, happy and uplifting.
Whereas the Twits, for example, is disturbing and unpleasant.
It tends to depend on how quickly the cartoonishly unpleasant characters (such as Aunts Spiker and Sponge) can be got out of the way.
Roald Dahl, though, is one of the few writers who can both plot well and write well. His language is a joy. I don't mind the replacement of an odd word whose once-benign meaning has become anachronistic, if it can be done without changing the meter, but I'd lament a rewrite to fit in with modern sensitivities.
(I recently read DTCOTW to my daughter, and was struck by how it wouldn't be written now. Not any of the major modern transgressions, but:
- poaching presented as a good thing, at least in that the poacher gets to eat tasty meat
- a small boy driving a car presented as somewhat heroic
- stoicism presented as a virtue)