[RedSparrows]

Yes, absolutely. And anyone genuinely interested in their country's history would - you'd think - be happy with that. Not just on a basis of honesty or revisionism - warts and all history is popular. Just ask the London Dungeon, or Terry Deary.

If the NT flags up how a stately home was built with the proceeds of slavery, one would hope that any reasonable person would be able to absorb that without having a fit of the vapours. Explain to the kids that yes, in the past, people did some very cruel things, but we know better now. Admiring the Tower of London doesn't mean that you approve of chopping off women's heads.

I suspect the reason people are getting so worked up about statues and mansions is that it goes against their "great men" theory of history (if you could call it that), in which everyone is either a hero or a villain. Churchill - beat the Nazis. That's it. Wellington - beat Napoleon. Alfred the Great - cakes. Everyone summed up in a single slugline, goodie or baddie, by their defining work shall ye know them. So, someone pointing out that the person up on that pedestal may have done some pretty dodgy stuff is effectively questioning why they're up there at all - and whether this great men theory actually holds any water.

I think this is all true, but that there's also a subtler element at play, too.

This is what I'd call, in my prattling, an ethical relation to history. An ethical relation to history is really important, and for the average 'NT gone woke' punter, that ethical relation is essentially 'I/we are good, and I/we are on the right track, and I/we know that sometimes we were a bit rough, but all in all, I/we are OK.'

This is about identity, security, pride, confidence. It's, in one sense, completely comprehensible: it's something we're all prey to, in various aspects of life, at various times.

The issue for me is to reach a better ethical relation to history, and this is where it gets tricky: both in terms of definition, and actually doing. The ethical relation I advocate is to recognise the stories of history, as any other, as contingent, competing, complex things that simultaneously, paradoxically connect and sunder us from one another and our collective past (e.g. 'I love big houses feels British' vs 'but the way they thought about X was fucking weird'). To 'see' this as clearly as we can (perfect vision is essentially impossible) we have to accept these things as they are, and not tie our normative selves to them. Instead, we see them as they are, we are interested or we are not, and we tie our normative selves to something else: a set of values, not things-pretending-to-be-values - which is what the dark side of tradition consistently offers us.

That's a ramble, I know, but I hope it made some sense.

[Yug]

I think Mr Sparrows' line of thought is that the anti warts-and-all history mob are having to face up to the fact that we, the British, are no better than anyone else. And they don't like that.

[RedSparrows]

TLDR: aye, and underneath that is a gap which education/culture/family/personal failure has not filled with a stronger understanding of the world beyond comforting stories.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

TLDR: aye, and underneath that is a gap which education/culture/family/personal failure has not filled with a stronger understanding of the world beyond comforting stories.

It used to be that comforting stories were enough. Now there are more critical thinkers, they are vocal (defeat of deference) and they have their own megaphones.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... eople.html

Guess what, he's delighted with the u-turn on net zero. Here's a big long whinge about all the people he hates.

Cunt.

[Youngian]

Once again, I find myself falling back on the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, who observed that when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing, they start believing in anything.

This tiresome and banal quote is so ubiquitous even Littlejohn now uses it to talk nonsense.

[Amazonian]

Belief in God implies, at least, some form of morality (or, at the very least, an acknowledgement of the idea of morality). Littledong is a hate-mongering, hypocritical, wanker. Morality to it is as meaningful as Sanskrit to a bacterium.

[RedSparrows]

Belief in God implies, at least, some form of morality (or, at the very least, an acknowledgement of the idea of morality). Littledong is a hate-mongering, hypocritical, wanker. Morality to it is as meaningful as Sanskrit to a bacterium.

Aye, it's such a lazy, transparent jab.

'Oh the moderns, they're so immoral, with their lack of faith'

Pull the other one, you moral vaccuum.

[satnav]

The usual predictable shit we have come to expect from Little Dick.

Cops who fire in the line of duty shouldn't be hung out to dry

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -Kaba.html

Dickie is happy to support the police as long as they are only shooting people of colour.

[Youngian]

Gun toting cops is a subject LJ desperately wants to sound authoritative about but knows nothing beyond a scantily informed layperson. Cops don’t expect to be above the rule of law but they do, cops are hung out to dry but trials take too long to come to court. The most famous case took a long time and the officer was found not guilty.

[Andy McDandy]

And the problem there isn't them being held to account, but capacity in the court system and police complaints authority.

I'd just say that in the wake of the Sarah Everard murder and vigil, and all-time record low public opinions of the police, this is incredibly bad optics by the fuzz.

[davidjay]

Let me guess - he's known plenty of coppers in the past, proper ones not the woke young kids now, always got on with them but these days you can't even push a black face down a flight of steps without some dopey bird shouting "Racist!"

[Rosvanian]

Just for once I wonder if Littlejohn ever considers writing something that isn't entirely predictable. He's so utterly tedious.

[Youngian]

Let me guess - he's known plenty of coppers in the past, proper ones not the woke young kids now, always got on with them but these days you can't even push a black face down a flight of steps without some dopey bird shouting "Racist!"

He (or his editor who doesn’t want to be done for contempt of court) has injected some balance. But suspicions have been raised

Nobody wants a re-run of the Brixton or Tottenham riots. But equally it has raised suspicions that Rowley is bending the knee to the BLM mob, while throwing the copper involved to the wolves.

[Andy McDandy]

So, black people need to remember to watch it and keep cool, unless they want some white man's stick.

Cops need to keep their distance from black people, remember they're the enemy.

Yeah. I get you, Littlejohn.

[MisterMuncher]

Let me guess - he's known plenty of coppers in the past, proper ones not the woke young kids now, always got on with them but these days you can't even push a black face down a flight of steps without some dopey bird shouting "Racist!"

He (or his editor who doesn’t want to be done for contempt of court) has injected some balance. But suspicions have been raised

Nobody wants a re-run of the Brixton or Tottenham riots. But equally it has raised suspicions that Rowley is bending the knee to the BLM mob, while throwing the copper involved to the wolves.

Said "wolves" would be the British justice system, which of course is made of fluffy chicks when "real criminals" are thrown to it

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Schroedinger's legal system.

[Youngian]

Said "wolves" would be the British justice system, which of course is made of fluffy chicks when "real criminals" are thrown to

During the phone hacking arrests you may recall the outrage and injustice Littlejohn expressed that his mates might have to do a few months in ‘a holiday camp.’

[Andy McDandy]

Yes, before that he was a big fan of the "perp walk"*, and as some of the longer standing board members may remember, he noted and approved its use in the trials of bankers in the wake of the 2008 crash.

Come 2011/12, it was a vulgar American import we didn't need.

*The practice of bringing a defendant into court in cuffs and prison uniform and under guard, reinforcing the assumption that they're guilty before their hearing begins.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailym ... -Zero.html

In which he pretends to have gone on tour around the UK and has his usual whinges about green things and tough men shooting folks and being held to account. We hold them to the highest standards, he says, before saying those standards should never be enforced.

Cunt.