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Wednesday 10 June 2020

Sarah Vine Fails GCSE History

After the Daily Mail had reacted with customary curtain-twitching horror to events in Bristol at the weekend, when the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down from its plinth and deposited in the Floating Harbour, the paper and its array of variously unappealing pundits have begun to desperately play catch-up, to try and appear relevant. And no-one does desperate catch-up like Sarah “Vain” Vine.
I fear for Britain's future if we erase the past (good and bad). It’s been a very long time since freedom of thought felt so fragile or so riskytells the headline, missing the minor detail that no part of the past has been erased, and the idea that a Mail pundit has had their freedom of thought constrained is beyond ridiculous. But do go on.

Complex questions of politics, race and identity have become sharply polarised, stripped of all nuance, simplified beyond all reason and presented as moral imperatives, a simple case of good versus evil, love versus hate, and yes, black versus white”. Which, freely translated, means she doesn’t know what the hell she is going on about.

But she’s trying. Very trying. “Virtually nowhere is it possible to have an open, constructive debate about the pros and cons of any given issue. Reason has been replaced by insult”. And that surprises a Mail pundit? The paper doesn’t do “debate”. It tells its readers how to think. And the Mail replaced reason with insult many years ago. Do try and keep up, 007.

There is so much that I have found deeply saddening about the scenes in recent days … In particular, the notion that all white people need to apologise for their very existence … and the idea we are all racists”. What’s that paper you write for, Ms V? But, as the late Clive James might have said, I digress. Normal Vine service is soon resumed.
The police ‘take a knee’, betrayed by politicians such as Sadiq Khan who take the path of least resistance, playing to the gallery and promising, as he did yesterday, to revise London’s landmarks according to the new rules of historical revisionism”. Using the protests as cover to bash another of those uppity brown people.

University students are ‘shamed’ into complying with the political demands of their unions, ‘called out’ for not participating in endless boycotts, fearful that if they refuse or dissent they will be ‘cancelled’ and their lives made a misery”. Bullshit. Anyone who’s been through University will know that if the student’s union tried to tell students what to do, they would get short shrift. No research, no credibility. But more lefty-bashing.

For instance, “As I write, Labour-led councils across Britain are threatening the future of any statues deemed to be offensive to the new cultural commissars”. More bullshit. No citation, and none will be provided. And the worst thing about her latest rant?

The column shows a statue of Robert Milligan, an 18th Century slave owner, being removed from its plinth outside the Museum of London Docklands. Ms Vine tells her readers that the past is being erased. Yet just behind where the statue stood, in that museum, is a Heritage Lottery Fund exhibition called London, Sugar, Slavery.

The past is not being erased. Nor, sadly, are Sarah Vine’s piss-poor columns.
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9 comments:

Steve Woods said...

Do the much-vaunted bookcases in the Vine/Gove household contain a dictionary?

If so, Sarah might avail herself of it to learn the difference between making history and erasing it.

tedbangor said...

Just wait until they go after all those History classes that are taught just using statues... I mean, that's a thing, right?

Anonymous said...

David Olusoga in his excellent podcast interview with Pluto Press made the point that people who complain about how there is too much about black history in the media etc can rarely respond if you ask them to name one slave owner, one slave ship and one slave plantation. At least it's only two out of three now.

Andy McDonald said...

The more I study the current crop of Tories, the more I see a bunch of people who a) never quite got over the thrill of being a school prefect; and b) weren't told 'no' enough (or ever) as children.

Anonymous said...

There's a problem with Oikyette.

She's an idiot "writing" for a far right deeply racist propaganda sheet.

It isn't as though the stone-headed double-chinned meff is capable of anything better.

anon said...

She missed the correlation of rich v poor in her witterings but then again I shouldn't be surprised, should I.

grim northerner said...

She knows the difference, the current crop of tories are deeply cynical and view truth-twisting as a means to an end. Civilised debate is impossible with such people. The deeper problem is their radicalisation of large sections of the population.

Rosie said...

Tim. I think whoever said in your piece that culture wars ignited suits the Tory agenda is right. The Cummings Johnson strategy is to whip it up, let it climb up and stay up under the general issue of immigration until a no deal Brexit is done.

Unknown said...

Quadruple chinned manatee/dugong.