A WEEK, as Harold Wilson said, is a long time in politics and last week was a case in point. Shamima Begum’s transition from terrorist to celebrity victim took just seven days. We on TCW, however, were crystal clear from the start about our position on the ISIS bride’s ‘plight’ as dramatised by the Times newspaper.
‘If you are like me, dear reader,’ Laura wrote ironically, ‘you will have been beside yourself with worry over Shamima Begum.’ What on earth were we doing, she asked, even considering risking our soldiers’ lives to save a girl who would have been happy to see their heads cut off?.
Little wonder that this dose of morality and sound sense struck a chord with so many readers and was our most-read post of the week.
One thing we cannot be accused of at TCW is being too earnest or taking life too seriously all the time. Our second most-read blog of the week had not just me rolling off my chair. Alan Ashworth’s debunking of the ‘boffin balderdash’ which credulous journalists last week reported as science brought the house down with our readers. ‘Put down the toaster and come out with your hands up‘ also catalysed the sharpest and wittiest commentary we have seen in TCW to date. The blog is a classic and the readers’ comments stand on their own too. Read, laugh and lighten your day!
Returning to more critical matters, you may have noticed that phrases like ’the punishment should fit the crime’ or ‘no punishment is good enough’ were strangely absent in the public discourse with respect to Ms Begum, a woman who’s still uttered no words of remorse or shame, though several of entitlement and why we should forgive her. Society, as represented by the mainstream media, has seemed almost solely obsessed with our responsibilities towards her.
Given such a fertile ground for exploitation, Gary Oliver saw fit to offer Ms Begum a helping hand with some satirical advice on how to make the most of her victim status and the short steps she needs to take for full transition from jihadi poster girl to Leftie celebrity virtue signalling pin-up. Like the best satires, it worked so well because it was so close to the shocking truth.
The next blog to hit a chord with readers featured another dimension of ‘progressive’ Leftist indoctrination we’ve all been subjected to. Chris McGovern’s ‘Alas, poor Meghan, you don’t know what you are talking about’ brought the no doubt well-meaning Duchess of Sussex to book for declaiming discrimination where it does not exist. Meghan is fast positioning herself as the ‘Queen’ of the celebrity, social justice warrior, virtue signallers. The problem is not just her ignorance but this unnecessarily divisive exploitation of her privileged position. Readers clearly appreciated Chris bringing her back down to earth with a dose of the facts – ones that the rest of the Royal Family should acquaint themselves with fast, before the Duchess does more damage.
Brexit continues to dominate the airwaves with the defection from the Tories of the terrible trio of Soubry, Allen and Wollaston, giving the BBC more ammunition with which to define the Brexit/leave centre ground as extreme as they ramped up No-Deal Project Fear. What of course the national broadcaster failed to explain, as Michael St George did in TCW, was that these ‘amigos’ are in fact ‘Defectors from Democracy’. Here is one soupçon of his exposure of their mendacious and duplicitous narrative:
‘The party is increasingly being dragged to the Right, they insist, including, on Brexit, by the ‘hard-line’ ERG and DUP in whose vice-like grip policy is trapped. Quite how this squares with a Cabinet dominated by Remainers, a party intent on capping the price at which energy can be sold, and both taxes and public spending at high percentages relative to GDP, is not explained.’
Though, as Michael pointed out, ‘their hysterical claim of a “Purple Momentum” taking over the party’ had already been comprehensively debunked, it provided too perfect a fit with the BBC’s own preferred narrative not use as an excuse to deride Brexit dissent, as we reported yesterday.
