So farewell Nadim Zahavi, your tax avoidance and your lies have finally done for you, and only your party and your leader’s lack of moral direction kept you there until those final weeks before the inevitable. I wonder if Richie Sage will learn from this.
Sunak was asked for my advice in a BBC interview about two weeks before the ax fell, I said: “Work where you think it will end up, and get there first.” He did not. So he ends up with the worst of all worlds – all the damage done by defending the completely inexcusable, and hiding behind “awaiting enquiry”, which lost him political capital and authority, and any credit. Reclaim by sacking what they didn’t expect.
How can anyone get the feeling that we might have another on our hands who is not up to the task of leading his own rigid party, let alone a country crying out for some good leadership?
My god, doesn’t time fly when your country is falling to pieces? … Is it really a whole year since I recorded how emotional I was at a fundraising luncheon for the Anne Frank Trust? In fact, I was so impressed that I wrote about it not only here but also in my – finally – just finished next book, But what can I do?A call to arms to protest being alienated from politics and instead becoming more involved in saving it from collapse by the Tories?
Anne Frank has a chapter aimed at debunking the cynical notion that “ordinary people” cannot make a difference. I highlighted not only Anne, whose story is so famous, but the woman whose caring and courage helped bring her diary to the world’s attention, Miep Gees, who died in 2010 at age 100. It is good that everyone dies young.
Last week’s event at the Park Lane Hilton in London had many memorable elements. On the deeply depressing side, new figures were published showing a steady rise in hate crimes, with the biggest rise being related to anti-Semitic hatred. David Baddiel, whose Jews Don’t Count currently ranks third in my stack of bedside books, gave a compelling analysis of “accidental antisemitism, the racism you slip by.”
A Chelsea supporter, he made it clear with his accounts of stewarding at football matches that he does nothing when Spurs fans are taunted with the Y-word. He said he is not blaming the attendants. They knew it was part of their job to deal with racist abuse inside the stadium. “They just don’t understand that this is racism.”
The highlight for me though was three groups of school children from different parts of the country who took to the stage to read poems addressed directly to Anne Frank, thanking her and explaining how she inspires them today.
Anne wrote in her diary that “I want to live after my death.” One of the six million killed by the Nazis, dead at age 16, it’s fair to say she achieved that ambition. Without knowing that she did it, she would make her legacy that much more powerful.
David Baddiel also talked about how casual antisemitism thrives in comedy. He told about a time he and two non-Jewish comedians were at a Jewish comedy festival and his colleagues’ jokes about Jews and money. not appropriate. a trope.
What might have been an appropriate joke about the Jews, he told one. “It’s a hot day and an Englishman, a Frenchman and a Jew walk into a bar. The Englishman says ‘I’m very thirsty… I must have a beer.’ The French say ‘I am very thirsty… I should have some wine.’ The Jews say, ‘I am very thirsty… I must be diabetic.'”
Mean jewish jokes. not funny. Hypochondriac Jewish jokes… OK. ok?
Joining Holocaust survivors and victims of antisemitic violence in lighting candles at the beginning of the luncheon was a woman who was not Jewish, but who was there that the Holocaust is an ongoing challenge.
Rahima Mahmut is an exiled Uighur who campaigns against the genocide perpetrated on her people by the Chinese authorities. He has had no contact with his family back home for many years, and has no idea where they are, or even if they are alive or dead. And she told me she couldn’t contact them because Chinese voice recognition technology would immediately put the people she spoke to in jeopardy.
He is also a musician. As you might expect, a lot of her songs are about loss and separation and having met her on the day when Scots around the world celebrate Robert Burns, I shared with her oh fond kiss, (Rhyme, that’s not a real romantic kiss.) But don’t be surprised if I get her the rest is politics podcast. The Uyghur story is one that should not be overlooked.
Speaking of stories they shouldn’t be paying attention to, what has happened to our country, its politics, and its media, that we appear so violently indifferent to the fate of children kidnapped and trafficked from a South Coast hotel? Where the government is supposed to be in charge of their security?
Labor MP Peter Kyle made a fiery speech in the Commons criticizing it for what it is. The government’s response has been brutal at best, downright brutal at worst.
However, all is well for Home Secretary Suella Braverman. His passivity and indifference appeal to the base. Base is the operative word. Braverman spoke of the “stain against humanity” presented by Nazism in a social media post for Holocaust Memorial Day. The reactions weren’t pretty.
I hope she finds time in her busy schedule to watch swimmer, the Netflix film about Syrian refugees, screened at Europhile last week. I heard this and looked back upon reading Erdem’s article, feeling distressed, but also uplifted, and angry at the way that Braverman and many others in his party and his media supporters demonized refugees.
Presenting an award at a business dinner, I took the opportunity to do one of my show-of-hands focus groups among several hundred guests. I asked him whether the economy was doing well or bad. 100% badly. How about Brexit? going well or bad? One hand was raised for good. So for 99.somethingother% badly.
It has become something of a pattern, whoever and wherever the audience is. School and College. Business and charity. The gulf between public opinion and the government’s reality-denying stance, and the opposition’s “make Brexit work” stance, is widening.
I attended a live BBC debate on Brexit this week, in which Jacob Rees-Mogg continued to defend it (Brexit ie not the BBC). I don’t think he had to fight with many of his colleagues to get the gig.
Last week was a bad week for the Beeb, and indeed for the UK, with major cuts to the BBC World Service, the loss of hundreds of jobs, and the end of radio output in several languages, among them Chinese, Hindi and Arabic. The cuts to the Farsi service also mean that people looking for honest coverage about women’s rights protests in Iran may now struggle to find it.
But this has further ramifications for Britain’s soft power, as despite the BBC further damaging its reputation in the country when its Tory-donating chairman helps a corrupt and corrupt prime minister pay off his debts, So its reputation is maintained in many parts of the world. Strong.
Asked in an interview on Al-Jazeera why the government had not taken steps to protect these services, I explained that the government was due to them. George Osborne’s austerity, subsequent license-fee freezes, and a political agenda against the BBC got us to where we are.
And a government that is prepared to overlook the damage done to soft power by our departure from the European Union is unlikely to fuss too much about far-flung foreigners who are no longer able to defend their own countries in a fair and reasonable manner. Have not been able to reach objective analysis.