History Debunked Refutes Critical Race Theory’s Rejection of Objective Fact

In this video from History Debunked, YouTuber and author Simon Webb attacks Critical Race Theory’s epistemology. Critical Race Theory is the theory of racial politics, devised by American Marxists, that Blacks are the victims of institutional racism. As the video states, Critical Race Theory has largely been confined to the US for the past 40 years, but is now being adopted in Britain. It was the McPherson report following the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which introduced the idea of institutional racism in Britain with its conclusion that the Met was institutional racist. Since then a number of other organisations have also been accused of institutional racism, including the NHS.

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy dealing with knowledge. There is a difference between subjective and objective knowledge. The statement that light moves at 186,000 miles per second is objectively true. It can be tested. But the statement that X hates someone is subjective, as it is difficult to prove objectively. In the West, knowledge is generally regarded as objective fact. But Critical Race Theory rejects objective fact in favour of ‘Standpoint Epistemology’. This is the view that the opinions and perceptions of minorities are what matter, and these should be accepted uncritically, as demanding objective proof or questioning them is a form of oppression. The video also states that the theory also promotes instead of facts the stories Black people tell amongst themselves. These stories, which may include myths, are to be regarded as incontrovertible truth, and should similarly not be subjected to criticism or testing.

The video illustrates this by citing the views of a young Black woman, Yomimi, in an article published by the Beeb, and the Oprah Winfrey interview with Meghan Markle. The Beeb article is about the higher percentage of graduate unemployment among Blacks. Yomimi is quoted as saying that she feels it is due to institutional racism, and that employers automatically reject applicants from Black and Asian candidates, whose names are difficult to pronounce. This was the subject of a previous video by History Debunked yesterday, in which he argued against this assertion. Official statistics show that Chinese and Indians are slightly better at obtaining jobs than Whites, but Chinese names are notoriously difficult for westerners to pronounce. However, the Chinese generally do better in education than Whites, while fewer Blacks than Whites obtain two or more ‘A’ levels. Black unemployment may therefore have more to do with poor Black academic performance than institutional racism amongst employers. But what is important about the article is that Yomimi is not asked to provide supporting facts for her arguments. It is just how she feels or sees the situation.

Similarly, Markle said little in her interview with Winfrey that could be objectively verified. Significantly, Winfrey thanked Markle for speaking her ‘truth’. This sounds strange to British ears, but it’s part of the same viewpoint that rejects objective truth in favour of feelings and perceptions.

I’ve no doubt that racism exists in this country, and the police force, especially the Met, has been notorious for the racism of some of its officers. Racism appears to be one explanation for the Met’s failure to prosecute Lawrence’s murderers, but they were also the sons of notorious London gangsters. An alternative explanation was that the cops were afraid of prosecuting them because of their fathers, or else were corrupt and on their payroll. Private Eye also stated a few years ago that an Asian and White lad were also separately the victims of racist murders, and the Met was similarly negligent about finding and prosecuting their killers but that there was no mention of this.

The rejection of objective fact, however, is a fundamental element of Postmodernism and its moral and cultural relativism. Instead, it sees every culture and viewpoint as equal. Way back in the 1990s I tried to do an MA on British Islam at my old College. As part of it, my supervisor sent me to several Cultural Studies seminars, which were thoroughly postmodern. These were on colonial or western views of extra-European cultures. The attitude really did seem to be that westerners really couldn’t understand or appreciate other cultures, who should thus be exempt from western criticism. Any attempt to do so was dangerously prejudiced and ‘othering’.

Unfortunately, parts of the women’s movement have also been contaminated by this irratrionalism. In their book Intellectual Impostures, Sokal and Bricmont, one an American left-wing mathematician and physicist, the other a Belgian philosopher, attack postmodern philosophy and particularly its appropriation of scientific concepts. These are used nonsensically to give an appearance of depth and profundity to arguments that are actually absurd and incoherent nonsense. In one chapter they attack a number of postmodern feminist writers, who refuse to use conventional logical argument because logic and objective are patriarchal concepts that mentally imprison women. I am not joking, and this is most definitely not a wind-up.

A friend of mine came across this attitude, also back in the 1990s, in the women’s committee of the local branch of the National Union of Students. He was told by someone who worked with it, that it was one of three autonomous committees, whose conclusions were automatically passed as NUS policy. The other committees were for Black and LGBTQ students. The women’s committee similarly rejected logic and objective fact. Instead their debates supposedly consisted of them largely talking about their experiences of sexual abuse before concluding with their recommendation on a particularly issue. Which was passed with no debate. This situation should have been unacceptable. I have every sympathy for anyone who has been sexually abused, but official decisions need to be based on logical argument and proper debate, not entirely subjective feelings and personal history unless these are directly relevant to the matter.

Sokal and Bricmont were highly critical of this feminist rejection of logic, not least because it was based on a very traditional view, that has been used to exclude women from authority. For centuries women were largely excluded from a number of professions and political power on the basis that they, unlike men, were emotional rather than reasonable and logical. The Nazis used the same argument to justify their removal of women from the workplace and politics. They also believed in Cultural Relativism, and what was appropriate for one race was unsuitable for others. This is shown in their denunciation of democracy as ‘Jewish’. Now cultural relativism and the rejection of objective fact in favour of feelings and perceptions is being promoted as empowering for Blacks and women.

Proper discussion of racism is entirely appropriate, especially given the continuing poverty and marginalisation of the Black community. But this has to be done through rational discussion and argument, backed up with facts and statistics. And this means a rejection of Postmodernism and Critical Race Theory’s theory of knowledge.

Boris Says There’s No Money to Pay Nurses, But Has Millions to Spend on Atomic Weapons

Mike’s put up an excellent and disturbing article today, which shows very clearly where Boris Johnson’s priority’s really are. He’s planning to reverse the proposed reduction of Britain’s nuclear arsenal to 180 warheads and increase it instead to 260. As the peeps on Twitter have pointed out, this is a 45 per cent increase. It’s supposed to be in preparation for a possible terrorist attack using chemical or nuclear weapons by 2030. ‘Russ’, one of the critics of this insane proposal, has asked what Boris intends to do in the event of an attack like 9/11, when the terrorists came from four different countries. Would he launch those missiles at four different capitals? He states ‘Not a chance. Idiotic, dangerous, flashy bullshit.’

The question about 9/11 is a very good one. The vast majority of the plotters came from Saudi Arabia, and there is very, very strong evidence that responsibility for the attack goes all the way to the very top, to country’s present king or his head of intelligence. But George Dubya and Blair didn’t order reprisals against Saudi Arabia. Instead, we invaded Afghanistan. The country was indeed hosting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, the organisation responsible for it. But I’ve also heard that the Afghans denied all knowledge of the plot and offered to surrender bin Laden to the Americans, but were ignored. The American military were planning the possibility of invading Afghanistan several years before in order to control a planned oil pipeline passing through it.

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was also accused of complicity with 9/11, and Blair was scaremongering about Hussein having weapons of mass destruction that could be launched within three quarters of an hour. This was also a lie. The real reason for the invasion was, once again, oil. The American and Saudi oil companies wanted Iraq’s reserves and its oil industry, while American multinationals also wanted to get their grubby mitts on the country’s state industries. The actual cost to the Iraqi people has been horrendous. The country’s tariff barriers were lowered as part of a plan to create the low tax, free market state the Neo-Cons dreamed about, with a result that every nation dumped their excess goods there, undermining its domestic businesses. The result was soaring bankruptcy and unemployment. The country’s welfare state was destroyed, as was the ability of women to pursue a career in safety outside the home. The country was riven by sectarian violence, and the mercenaries used as part of the invasion force ran amok, running drugs and prostitution rings. They also shot ordinary Iraqis for sport. The Allied forces also used depleted uranium and other highly toxic materials in their armaments, with the result that the country also has a horrendously high rate of birth defects.

And now Boris wants more nukes. Does he intend to use them on further victims of western imperialism, countries deliberately and wrongfully blamed for terrorist attacks just to further western geopolitical and commercial goals? Mike also suggests that it seems to him that Boris is planning to start some kind of war with a country on or near the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would like to set off a few nukes to show how tough he is.

This is all too possible. The American radical magazine, Counterpunch, published an article a few years ago arguing that the American military was set on a policy of ‘full spectrum dominance’. This meant that it was to remain the world’s only superpower with the ability to destroy or conquer any other country that could threaten it. And it looked very, very much that Hillary Clinton, who claimed to be terribly offended by the treatment of Meghan Markle, was preparing for a war with China. Lobster has also published a very detailed article arguing that, despite the rhetoric and posturing about the Chinese threatening western security interests in the South China Sea, the Chinese actually aren’t any danger at all. But they do threaten the global American commercial power both in practice and at an ideological level. The Americans believe in deregulation and free trade, while in China capitalism is regulated and state-directed. The global struggle between America and China is partly about which model of capitalism should be dominant.

And then there’s the issue of whether you could ever use a nuclear bomb in the event of a terrorist attack. From the 1970s to historic Good Friday peace agreement in the ’90s, Northern Ireland and Britain suffered terrorist violence and bombings. In Ulster this was by Irish Nationalist and Loyalist paramilitaries, while in Britain the bombings were carried out by the IRA. Following 9/11, one of the critics of the invasion of Afghanistan or Iraq asked whether Britain would have used the same tactics of mass bombing and air strikes on Northern Ireland in response to the IRA’s terrorism. Of course we wouldn’t, although we did send troops there to suppress it. There’s a real possibility that, thanks to Brexit, the Good Friday Agreement could break down and Ulster could once again fall into violence and bloodshed. Which also raises the spectre of further terrorist bombings in Britain. Would Boris nuke Derry or Belfast in response? I doubt it. At the same time, many of the Islamist terrorists responsible for atrocities in Britain seem to be homegrown, Muslim Brits who come from ordinary, peaceful families, but who have been radicalised by Islamist propaganda on the Net or from some firebrand preacher in a British mosque. Obviously, Boris isn’t going to use it in Britain itself.

There’s also the danger that if Boris every uses them against a foreign enemy, it’ll pitch the world into a nuclear war that will end very quickly with the destruction of the planet. I can remember the late, great Irish comedian Dave Allen commenting on this in one of his shows on the Beeb during Reagan and Thatcher’s New Cold War of the 1980s. ‘Do you know,’ he said in his tobacco and whisky cured voice, ‘that there are enough nuclear weapons to blow up the world three times. Three times! Once is enough for me!’ It was a profound relief for millions around the world when Reagan and Gorbachev signed their arms limitation agreement in Iceland. That, and the collapse of Communism, promised the beginning of a better world, where we wouldn’t have to fear nuclear annihilation. Well, it was until India and Pakistan looked set to nuke each other later in the ’90s.

But now those dreams of a better, more peaceful world are fading as Boris once again wishes to send us all back to the days of Thatcher and the Cold War. Thatcher was vehemently in favour of keeping Britain’s nuclear deterrent. So much so that she falsified the results of an experiment to estimate the results of a nuclear war on Britain. The experiment showed that it would end with the country’s major cities reduced to nuclear cinders. This was too much for the leaderene, who had the parameters of the projection altered to give the results she wanted. But this still would have resulted in millions dead, and so she had the parameters altered again to show that Britain would have survived with minimal damage. By which time the whole exercise had to be scrapped as it was completely unreliable.

Michael Foot, the leader of the Labour party at the time, favoured unilateral nuclear disarmament. He was right, but the Tories and their puppet press viciously attacked him as some kind of fool or traitor, who would give in to the evil Commies. The complaint of many Tories was that he would give our nuclear weapons away. Unlike Maggie, the bargain basement Boadicea, as I think Roy Hattersley once called her.

It looks very much like Boris is playing the same game. He’s wrecking the economy, destroying the health service and welfare state, but he’ll have the right-leaning part of the British public praising him for standing up to those evil foreigners and protecting the country with nukes.

And all the while he’s claiming that there’s no money to give the nurses and other hardworking, front-line professionals anything more than what is in reality a derisory cut in wages. Which is clearly a lie. But it does remind me of what Goering once said:

‘Guns will make us powerful. Butter will make us fat.’

He’s following the Nazis in deliberately starving people while splashing the cash on arms.

For further information, see: Nuclear bomb announcement sends clear message: warmonger Johnson has cash to KILL, not heal | Vox Political (voxpoliticalonline.com)

I Stand with Piers Morgan Against Meghan Markle’s Racism Allegations

The big news this week has obviously been Harry and Meghan’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, and specifically Markle’s allegations of racism against unnamed royal advisors and flunkeys. Yesterday Piers Morgan got the heave-ho for very baldly stating his objections to Markle’s allegations. Standing outside his own not unimpressive residence yesterday, the former editor of the Mirror said that he didn’t believe a word Markle said, and that she had done enormous damage to the royal family, especially when Prince Philip was lying in hospital. Zelo Street has published a piece critiquing his remarks, and pointing out that Morgan’s claims to believe in and defend democracy and free speech are a bit rich, considering how he shouts down those he doesn’t agree with. He was also the editor of the Mirror when its journos and those of the Scum were hacking phones left, right and centre. Back in the 1990s he was also in the pages of Private Eye as it was under his editorship of the Mirror that the two hacks in the paper’s ‘City Slickers’ column committed the share ramping that got them arrested. The Eye presented very strong evidence that Piers ‘Boy’ Morgan was also involved, but somehow managed to escape arrest and prosecution. Morgan has fully reciprocated the magazine’s animus towards him. According to Ian Hislop, Morgan sent round a hack to talk to his parish priest, hoping that the good clergyman would betray a few confidences Hislop had made during Confession. In this instance, he was disappointed. Hislop’s like me, an Anglican. Individual confession is part of Roman Catholic belief and practice, not Church of England. And I don’t think the priest told Morgan’s boy or girl any secrets anyway.

Of course, the right-wing scumbag press have been engaged in a long campaign against Harry and Markle. They dislike her as an intrusive left-winger. Alex Belfield, the arch-Tory YouTuber and internet radio host, sneeringly refers to her as ‘Meghan Mallarky’. Not only does he hate her for being left-wing, feminist, anti-racist and ‘woke’, he also sees her as aggressively self-centre and manipulative. His short videos about the couple frequently included him urging Harry to dump her and return to the bosom of the royal family. Zelo Street has also pointed out that there is more than a touch of racism in the press’ antipathy to Markle. Part of their hatred was also due to the fact Markle wasn’t prepared to play their games. She wanted all media access and interviews to be on hers and Harry’s terms, not theirs. Snubbed with their power to make or break celebrities under attack, the press responded with hostile coverage of the royal couple.

But this time I do think Morgan is right. Markle’s allegations simply don’t ring true, and are likely to damage the royal family. Simon Webb, the author of the ‘History Debunked’ YouTube channel, put up a video the other day critiquing some of the remarks Hal and Megs made to Winfrey. Webb is, I think, a Telegraph-reading Tory. He’s also a very strong critic of some of the assertions and fake history put out by anti-racist activists and believes in the ‘Bell Curve’ nonsense about there also being differences in intelligence between the races. But he also seems not to be personally racist, and has put up several excellent videos tearing down the vile conspiracy theory about the Jews promoting mass immigration to destroy the White race. His arguments also seem to be based on real, historic fact.

His video critiquing the allegations Hal and Megs made begins with him commenting on Harry’s complaint that his father had cut him off financially. Webb thought this was peculiar, because by the time he was 20, he’d been supporting himself financially and independently of his family. He was somewhat out of touch with contemporary young people, but it seemed quite odd to him that a 36 year old man on the edge of middle age should complain about no longer being sent money by his father. It can also be added that Harry is immensely wealthy anyway, and so can well afford to look after himself and his wife in the style to which they have become accustomed.

He also wondered how true the allegations of racism could be, considering that Markle doesn’t look particularly Black to him. He observed that she looks more like the olive-skinned people of the Mediterranean. Which, I think, is a fair comment. I know people, who as far as I know are completely White, who go her colour or darker in the summer. Black anti-racists have complained for a long time about ‘colourism’. This is the form of racism in which lighter-skinned people of colour are given higher status, better opportunities and respect than their darker-skinned kindred. It’s another hangover from slavery and the caste system that it gave rise to. Darker skinned, ‘Black’ slaves were held to be more suitable for tough, physical work, while lighter skinned slaves were given less arduous duties commanding greater respect out of the sun. It seems to me that if colourism does exist, then Markle is probably a beneficiary of it, and not a victim of racism.

Then there is that comment by a courtier, speculating what colour the baby would be. It’s actually highly questionable whether this is actually racist. People usually speculate about the appearance of an expected child, and which one of the parents it will take after. Webb here recalls how one of his friends was a bi-racial young woman, who had an affair with a White guy, and became pregnant. Their Black friends freely speculated on whether the child would be White or Black. It seemed to Webb that the royal courtiers were being accused of racism simply for doing what people, including Blacks normally do, without any racist intent.

And the more I look back at Markle’s conduct over the past few years, the more it seems to me that, unfortunately, the scumbag right-wing press do have a point. I think she is manipulative, egocentric and self-promoting. And while I am no great fan of Morgan, I don’t think he should have been forced out of his position on GMB for his opinions on Markle. It very much looks like another piece of cancel culture, where individuals are being silenced for having controversial opinions. Mostly it’s been done against the left, but there have been instances where someone has been removed from YouTube for expressing a reasonable opinion someone has taken exception to as racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic or whatever. I’m sure Zelo Street is right when they point out that Morgan is no real defender of free speech and democracy himself. But Morgan’s forced departure is itself an attack on someone’s right to express their reasonable opinion.

In this matter, it’s Morgan’s opponents who are undermining free speech. Just as the pair’s interview with Oprah threatens to further undermine the monarchy.

Prince Harry Is Quite Right about Trump and Global Warming

One of the big news stories today is about Prince Harry being caught out in a prank call by two Russian hoaxers. They posed as teen climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and her father, and tricked him into making some impolitic comments. The one replayed in the ITV news piece about this story was of the prince saying to ‘Thunberg’ that he didn’t mind telling ‘you guys’, but that Donald Trump had blood on his hands through his refusal to sign the Paris accords on global warming. This was going to have terrible effects on the Pacific Island nations.

The hoax was reported by the Scum, and Zelo Street today has put up a piece wondering if Murdoch’s mighty organ didn’t pay the two jokers or put them up to the job. Because how else would they know that Harry and Meghan are living in luxury on Vancouver Island? That would make sense. The Murdoch press has plenty of previous with this. There’s the entire career of the fake sheikh Mahmood Mazher in the late, unlamented News of the Screws. Mazher, who really came from Birmingham, used to dress up as an Arab sheikh and then ingratiate himself with the good, the great, and the not-so-great, in order to trick them into doing or saying something improper. He tried it with a friend of the two princes and the young man’s girlfriend, whisking them off to Las Vegas. They were given a whirlwind tour of the sites, while Mazher in disguise kept asking them questions about the royal family, and particularly the Queen Mother. The couple didn’t have any opinion about them, and told Mazher that. They didn’t realise who he was at the time, and it was only when they were back in Blighty that they twigged it was him. Not that it did Mazher any good. When they checked with the Screws, they were told that he’d got nothing of any value out of them and the whole trip had wasted £7,000. Good. May all of these stunts by Murdoch’s lackeys be such colossal wastes of money.

This might have some bearing on how Trump views the British establishment or the royal family, but the prince is now a private citizen and can say what the devil he likes. And he is absolutely right about Trump and the Pacific Islanders. Trump doesn’t believe one bit in climate change and global warming, and is actively trying to block any state research and publication of findings showing that it exists. And it is a threat to the Pacific Island nations. One of them – I think it might have been Kiribati – is only a metre or so above sea level. They put on a demonstration a few years ago urging the world and the major powers to do more to tackle climate change, because rising sea levels mean that their homeland may soon be underwater. Harry obviously knows this, and I’m not surprised – his gran is the head of the Commonwealth, after all.

I got the impression that the Murdoch press and the rest of the Tory media hated Harry for marrying Meghan, a woman of colour, and taking over some of her progressive ideas, like feminism and Green politics. They’re probably congratulating themselves even now with having tricked him into disgracing himself.

But not in my book.

The prince was the victim of a disgraceful prank, which serves no good public purpose anyway.

And the prince is absolutely right about Trump, climate change and global warming.

And he’s shown that he takes very seriously both the climate crisis and the welfare of the peoples of the Commonwealth and the world who are affected.

Murdoch and his goons are a disgrace, but Harry and Meghan have outclassed them.

I hope they win their lawsuit against Murdoch and his goons, and that this incident only makes Harry and Meghan more popular, and Murdoch more despised.

 

If the Press Can Publish Harry and Megan’s Correspondence, then We Should See Murdoch and Co’s

Harry and Meghan and suing the Mail on Sunday for publishing a letter from Megan to her father. And today, that bastion on the British press – and as the late Terry Wogan used to say of the Beeb, ‘there are many basty ‘uns in there’  – the MoS set out its defence. It’s the old ‘public interest’ argument. They’re going to argue that Meghan and Harry don’t have the same right to privacy as the rest of us, because they’re private correspondence and activities are of interest to the public. Zelo Street has put up a piece demolishing it by showing how circular the argument is. The letter, and anything else the royal couple writes or does, is of interest to the public because the press tells them it is. Zelo Street states

‘What the MoS is setting out in its defence is that what it did is OK, because that is what the paper expects to be able to get away with. Hal and Meg should not expect to have any privacy because that would impact on the MoS’ business. Hence that paper and all the others kicking off like so many spoilt children at the prospect of the couple being out of reach very soon. How dare they stop the press scoring copy off of them?

In mounting this defence, then, the MoS has proved the Duchess’ point for her. But she and her family are not there merely to provide cheap copy. The press just doesn’t get it.’

See: https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2020/01/mail-on-sunday-proves-meghans-point.htm

The public interest argument does, however, also justify the publication of the private correspondent of the newspaper magnates, who make their bloated fortunes exploiting the private correspondence not just of Harry and Meghan, but of anyone else in the public eye. Murdoch, Geordie Grieg, the weirdo Barclay twins and the rest of the whole unsavoury crew play a powerful role in modern politics. They have intimate connections to the Tory government, and not only shape public opinion in its favour, they also arrogantly assume that they have a right to dictate the political direction not just of the government but also of the opposition. Former cabinet members have reported that Rupert Murdoch was always an invisible presence at the meetings of Blair’s government, and the former Labour Prime Minister worried how his policies would go down with the owner of the Scum and the Times. That’s why the Mail, the Times and the Scum have been running pieces telling the Labour party what it should do to become electable – unsurprisingly this the expulsion of the Corbynites and the return to Blairism – and viciously attacking left-wing candidates for the Labour leadership, like Rebecca Long-Bailey.

The press barons are unelected, massively powerful, and have what amounts to a monopoly on news in this country. Murdoch’s empire should have been broken up under the Monopolies and Mergers’ Commission years ago, but it wasn’t because he was a supporter of the Tories. They also have huge business interests, that also dictate the views their papers take on various stories. Way back in the 1980s, for example, Tiny Rowlands, the owner the Absurder, wouldn’t publish pieces critical of Zimbabwe because he had interests in a mining corporation working there. But these same press magnates are absolutely unaccountable. Yet they arrogantly assume they have the right to dictate governmental policy, while zealously keeping their own affairs private. 

But if the Royals have no reasonable right to privacy, neither do Grieg, Murdoch et al. If they are shaping policy and public opinion, we should know their private business to judge for ourselves whether they are correct and acting in our interest. It’s only fair. And as they acted as the unofficial Tory propaganda office at the last election, it should all be accessible under the Freedom of Information Act.

How’s that for governmental transparency, Rupert?

IPSO and the Press Story about Princess Di’s Warning to Meghan Markle from beyond the Grave

I found another interesting snippet from Private Eye while I was looking through a pile of old copies last night, which adds a slightly different perspective Prince Harry’s decision to prosecute the press.  Harry is rightly angered at the way his and other’s phones were hacked, and it appears that one of the other victims was his mother, Princess Diana. It looks like one of those bearing responsibility for that was Piers Morgan, who was editor of the Mirror and then News of the World when it happened.

https://zelo-street.blogspot.com/2019/10/prince-harry-says-they-hacked-diana.html

I’m afraid I’ve misplaced the snippet, but if anyone’s really interested, I’ll try to find it again. But it was a report on a later sent to a complainant by IPSO about an article published in one of the newspapers. This claimed that a pair of ‘psychic twins’ had been contacted by the late Lady Di, who had given them warning from her to be given to Meghan Markle. If the Eye’s account is correct, it was deeply tasteless story. I’m not a sceptic regarding life after death and the possibility of the dead contacting the living, but this is right up there with some of the nonsense spread by mediums like the late Doris Stokes in her prime. And the various celebrity mediums, who’ve come out with messages from everybody from Henry VIII, Julius Caesar and Queen Victoria. It’s nonsense. The person, who complained to IPSO about it apparently objected to it because these claims were being reported as fact. IPSO stated that they decided that it had not. The article had included plenty of terms indicating neutrality towards the truth of the twins’ claim, like ‘perhaps’, and indicated that they were only reporting what they claimed through statements like ‘they said’. And so IPSO turned the complaint down.

The article didn’t say, who had complained to IPSO, carefully preserving their anonymity. And it could have been anyone. Princess Di may be over twenty years’ dead, but she still has her fans. Just as Meghan Markle and Harry also have their admirers amongst the general public, quite apart from their personal friends.

I was never a fan of Princess Diana. She did some good as Prince Charles’ consort, notably in her campaign against landmines. But she was also adept at manipulating the press, and her spat with Charles did diminish the general esteem of the monarchy, even if Charles was the adulterer. Nevertheless, she was killed with Dodi Fayed trying to escape the paparazzi press that followed and exploited her.

This story reminds me of comments Robbie Williams made a few years ago on a programme hosted by Jon Ronson on Radio 4. Ronson and Williams were going to a UFO and alien abductions convention in the US. When asked how he got interested in ufology, the 90s singing sensation replied that it was partly due to the rubbish he had suffered from the press about his mother. She was a medium, and so the papers had run endless stories about Williams, his mother and spooks until he was so sick and tired of it that he couldn’t read the papers. It was then that he started getting into UFOs, as something of a diversion. And on the subject of UFOs, Williams sounded remarkably sensible and grounded. When asked about some of the absurdities of the alien abduction phenomenon and Indigo Children – supposedly aliens incarnated as children to guide us here on Earth – he simply replied that he didn’t believe it or disbelieve it.

You can well understand why Williams would be upset with the press stories about himself and his mother. Just as it would be no mystery to anyone if Harry was upset about similar stories about his own mother and wife. Lady Di was certainly no angel, but she was hounded to her death by the papers. And the papers have been attacking Meghan Markle, with more than an undercurrent of racism beneath. How dare this American woman of colour marry a royal! And anyone would be annoyed at the press for hacking their and their family’s phones.

I therefore have every sympathy for Prince Harry’s decision, and wish him the very best in his suit against the press, particularly Rupert Murdoch and Piers Morgan. I’m sure that many Conservatives will too. I know one, who hated the Sun despite its right-wing bias, because it had taken every opportunity to exploit and run down the monarchy. It looks like now one of the royals is biting back. 

 

 

Chunky Mark on Increasing Poverty and Cuts, While Boris Wants Private Jet

This is another piece bashing Boris Johnson, our vain and incompetent Foreign Secretary. But it also tackles much more than that. This is another video from Chunky Mark, the Artist Taxi Driver. In this piece, he comments on how Boris is tired of flying first class with other people, and now wants his own jet. This is while the rest of Britain is labouring hard with paper hats on, working to pay for the royal wedding, the Tories’ stately homes, and the corporate elite knocking back their Pina Coladas in the Bahamas. He shows the covers of the newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Mirror. The Mail launched an attack on the House of Lords, which Chunky Mark compared to a snake eating itself, beginning with its tail, until only the head remains. Moving on to the Mirror, he comments on their front page story, which is how amused Meghan was when a bee flew into Harry’s ear. And this will go on forever. He makes the point that while this is on the cover, there’s grim news inside. The Tories have cut 700 school nurses, attacking children’s health in schools. Marks and Spencer’s are to shut 100 stores. The cuts in the number of school nurses is to pay for the corporate feasts and the Tories’ garden parties, while the closure of the M&S stores will devastate towns up and down the country. This is Theresa May’s hostile environment: child poverty, homelessness, austerity, Grenfell, Windrush.