OF all the times of the year, if you are a Christian, Christmas is the most uplifting and joyful. Yet never in my lifetime have we had so much to make us despair.
Christmas Day is traditionally when Anglicans like me pray for the Queen and for the Government.
Well, I’ll be praying hard. I will be praying for the Queen, who has borne so much and has ‘carried’ this country from the post Second World War years, coming up now to seventy years, with a unique sense of public duty and sacrifice that has inevitably come at the expense of her personal life and liberty and time for her family.
It grieves me that, this Christmas in Windsor with the husband who has stood so dutifully behind her, now old and frail, she has had this politically-stoked Covid nightmare inflicted on the latter part of her life and reign.
I will be praying too – I fear in vain – for the Prime Minister and the Government to see the light and have the courage to admit their terrible wrongs, to understand what they can change and what is beyond their power; to resist illiberal and anti-democrat influences, to put aside their shortsighted and authoritarian advisers, and to lead the nation back out of fear to sanity.
But Christmas is also a time to give thanks and to be joyful about the good in the world. Of that, there is much, and much has been in evidence to me at The Conservative Woman.
First, it’s in TCW’s core team, Margaret and Alan Ashworth, Emma Kane, Priscilla Pollara, Tom McCarthy, Michael Curzon and, of course, Laura Perrins.
Let me tell readers about their dedication, their skill, their good humour and our teamwork. It is, and they are, a delight!
Then it’s in TCW’s growing band of writers. Not to forget the talent as well as loyalty of those who have been with us from the start – Andrew Cadman, David Keighley, Nick Booth, Chris McGovern, Paul Horgan, Belinda Brown, Gary Oliver, Karen Harradine, Philippa Taylor, Michael St George and Patrick Benham-Crosswell – all still writing for us.
Joined later by another set of stalwarts – amongst whom are Will Jones, Jane Kelly, Caroline ffiske, Bruce Newsome, Campbell Campbell-Jack, Tim Bradshaw, Peter Lloyd, John Ashworth and Paul Homewood. We have well over a hundred writers on our list of contributors – just too long a list to name all.
Since lockdown, more ‘goodness’ has arrived with a new flood of exceptionally gifted writers and thinkers. Scientists like Mark Pickles and Andrew J Green, medics like Clare Craig, ethicists like David Seedhouse, social theorists like Kevin Donnelly and Frank Palmer, clerics like Peter Mullen, political commentators like Vlod Barchuk and Donald Forbes, young writers and thinkers like Frederick Edward and Daniel Miller, artists like Andrew Mahon – who’ve helped turn us into the leading platform for cultural and political dissent, including the lockdown variety!
I want to thank them all – for the quality of their output and quite simply for their spirit. My thanks, too, are for the courage and fierce independence of James Delingpole, Peter Hitchens, Toby Young and Bel Mooney, who have all given us their imprimatur this year.
The more self-censorship oppresses and corrupts the increasingly woke mainstream media, the more it is driving forward new alliances of dissenters and thinkers who might otherwise might never have made contact or shared ideas and knowledge in the way that is happening now – through sites like Toby Young’s amazing Lockdown Sceptics and the growing and super-energetic group of lawyers, medics, health experts and scientists who make up the expanding PCRclaims platform.
This is a ‘coming together’ of people from all political backgrounds in defence of liberty and in face of a shared alarm about the Government’s dangerous response to Covid.
Last but not least on the goodness tally is the magnificent response of you, our readers – the extended TCW family from whom so many of our new writers come, Michael Fahey to name but one.
It is the readers that make our site so unique. It’s hard to find the right words to describe the life in the level of informed and insightful below-the-line commentary as well as in the hundreds of ‘heads-up’ emails sent every week to info@conservativewoman.co.uk that keeps us informed and on the money!
I am so grateful. It’s another reason for our fast-growing page view numbers – a record 950,000 last month – and, I believe, for readers’ generous donations – the £5, £10, £20 payments (and sometimes more) coming in.
For once, I don’t have to go into the Christmas period worrying how I am going to cover my operational costs and keep going in the New Year. My heartfelt thanks to everyone who has given. Please continue if you want us to continue.
All this is the silver lining to these last months of lost liberty and wilful government destruction.
This is our Good News of the Christmas season. Good, wise and intelligent people stepping up and coming together. From this basis of strength and truth, we will – after a break in which you will be still be able to enjoy a pre-planned schedule on TCW up to and including New Year’s Day – continue our fight for a better government and society in the New Year.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all.
