WEEKEND WIDDY PLUS
BY-Elections, Brexit and Brutes
Welcome to Weekend Widdy which, as regular readers will know, is a collection of the type of short pieces which used to surround my main article on my old Daily Express page. It can come out anytime over the weekend but usually on a Sunday and it is free to all. However, when Widdy on Wednesday has not appeared, there is extra paid content in Weekend Widdy in order that paying subscribers may get full value as they keep this Substack going.
A reminder that I am also on Cameo and that I have a weekly article in GB News Online and, in rather more frivolous mode, a weekly column in Best magazine. Additionally I appear every Monday at 8.40 am on the Mike Graham broadcast and at 8am on Fridays on Talk’s Mark Dolan.
A clip from my last Mike Graham appearance appears below and those who want to watch Mike’s show can follow the link https://www.youtube.com/@themikegrahamshow
There has always been some residual goodwill towards Harry and Meghan, particularly among younger people. I suspect that will now be gone pretty quickly after Harry's cruel treatment of the King. The King is a grandfather and far from well and he was psyched up by Harry to expect a visit from his grandchildren, Archie and Lilibet. The ink was hardly dry on the news reports when he suddenly decided to reconsider bringing them. He knew nothing more that might influence his decision in the short space of time that elapsed between the original announcement and the news that he was reconsidering. As usual he is quoting security, despite the fact that he will be staying in a royal palace where all security will be provided.
Harry’s work in establishing the Invictus games is worthy of respect but I am beginning to think that he himself is absolutely not. What a rotten thing to do! And what sort of rotten person would do it?
The irony is that he has made such a production of portraying himself and Meghan as emotionally intelligent, stifled by a family that lacked such insight. From where I'm sitting tonight, it looks to be the other way round.
The fact that Bridget Phillipson's family made a substantial profit from buying and selling their council house does not mean that she is obliged to share the view that such transactions are morally right or socially beneficial. Children often disagree with their parents. Nevertheless it might have been prudent of her to have revealed the fact herself rather than waiting for the dirty diggers of Fleet Street to do it for her. Elementary ars politica, one might think.
The problem is that today’s politicians seem unable to work out simple tactics like that, just as they seem incapable of asking a parliamentary question without reading every word, making a speech without notes or carrying out an interview without parroting a brief. Women MPs cry misogyny when they are beaten in debate. Men who respond robustly are termed bullies. Heaven help Andy Burnham because he will have no more quality to choose his ministers from than had Keir Starmer.
It is difficult to fathom the sheer wickedness of Jamie Varley, the teacher who adopted a baby and then sexually abused, injured and finally killed him. The judge’s words were sobering: he could not rule out the possibility that Varley had adopted the child with the intention of inflicting sexual abuse on him from the outset. No normal person could look at the photographs of that innocent little child without feeling heartsick.
Bluntly, I think he should have been hanged, the evidence being direct rather than circumstantial and the repetitive nature of the abuse meaning that it was premeditated. I suspect Varley himself will soon be wishing that we still had capital punishment, because life in prison will be terrifying. Prisoners serving full life sentences will have nothing to lose by attacking him and he will never know when such an attack might happen or from which quarter it might come.
He will probably spend a lot of time alone, locked up for his own safety in solitary confinement and he is still only 37. There is not much anybody can do about it and I am not convinced it is any better or more humane than the finality of execution.
Since I last posted the Oxford Union has been back in the news, this time having caused the city to experience lockdowns and close pubs because the awful Tommy Robinson had been invited to debate the motion “This House believes the West is right to be suspicious of Islam”. The Opposition to the motion was led by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.
This is a simple issue of free speech. It was a debate not an address, so Robinson would not have had a free run and therefore there was no need whatever to prevent his airing his views which could be challenged. As I myself said some years ago in that very Oxford Union, it is better to hear and destroy in the open than to muzzle and drive underground. Yet out of an estimated 450 due to attend only 100 or so managed to get there through the disorder in the city promulgated by Antifa and others who preferred to shut down debate. That means some 350 did not hear the counter arguments to Robinson’s.
In 2007 the Oxford Union invited David Irving, the historian who has provoked enormous controversy because of his comments on the Holocaust, to speak. There was an understandable outcry but the meeting went ahead and apparently many students came out of curiosity, wondering what his arguments were and left tapping their heads, saying he was bonkers. That is what free speech plus challenge does: it exposes weakness in a case and that is always preferable to merely silencing people by threats of violence and disorder.
So well done to the Union for allowing free speech and shame on the protesters who tried to prevent it.
Apparently only 500 people still speak Cornish. I am surprised there are still so many. Cornwall Council is proposing to commit £1.7 million on promoting usage of the language even though that same council has heavy debts and forecasts a budget shortfall of some £100 million by 2030. I have no doubt that ancient languages should be studied but this should take place in universities and other academic environments as a highly specialised branch of learning. Nobody is going to order their groceries in Cornish.
Languages die out or mutate naturally. We no longer speak as Chaucer would have spoken, let alone as Hereward the Wake would have spoken. I've even got doubts about the Welsh language being made compulsory in schools. It seems to me that children would be better served by learning languages such as French or German. At least however in Wales the language is still spoken and there is some sense in giving children the opportunity to learn it but there is no sense at all in promoting Cornish when it is dying a natural death. Indeed those 500 people who are still fluent in the language are from all over the world and not even all native to Cornwall.
I am half Cornish and very attached to that county, but sentiment must sometimes yield to sense.
There is no contradiction at all be tween Nigel Farage saying that the £5,000,000 he received was a personal gift designed to enable him to have security, which he undoubtedly needs, and the donor saying that it was a reward for the work he has done on Brexit. Christopher Harborne gave a personal gift to Farage but why was he willing to be so generous? Because he liked what Nigel had done on Brexit, a cause close to his own heart. When helping people, there is normally a reason for wanting to do so and usually it is because we like what they are doing. Charities operate on exactly that basis, which is why it is possible to approve of some but not of others.
Those trying to make capital out of this should grow up and move on.
The Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday appear to be pursuing an agenda of suggesting that Kemi Badenoch is the answer to the nation’s ills, despite the fact that according to the poll the latter published today, three times as many voters think Farage would be better at tackling immigration than Kemi, more people want to see Farage as Prime Minister than Kemi and Reform UK is at the top of the polls for voting intention while Kemi ‘s party trails behind Labour. But I suppose hope springs eternal.
Hilariously, the paper proclaims in big, black headlines that “voters back Kemi pledge not to do deal with Farage” as if Nigel has not been constantly saying that he has no interest in a pact with the Tories and the Ashcroft polls had not already demonstrated that there is no very great enthusiasm for it among the Tories themselves.
Will the Mail please now tell me of one original idea that Kemi has come up with? Reform says we will leave the ECHR and the Tories, who spent 14 years telling us we couldn’t and shouldn’t, eventually followed suit. Reform says it will abandon the target for net zero and start using our own gas and oil and eventually Kemi follows suit. She is a follower not a leader and while she may be better than some of the Tory leaders who have jumped on and off the merry go round in recent years, she has all the impact of a feather crashing on a mattress in terms of ideas and drive.
Yes, she has raised her game at Prime Minister’s Questions but do not underestimate the role played by the briefing and prepping team. Trump said unkindly but accurately that Keir Starmer was hardly Churchill. In the same spirit I observe that Kemi is not Thatcher.
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