Sunday 1 January 2023

Consonant Vowel Consonant Consonant

"Pelton, Chester-le-Street," announces Google as my location, "based on your IP address." I have never lived there. I am not sure that I have ever even been to Pelton. Yet, for far from the first time, that is where Google thinks that I am. Read the rest of this post in the light of that and this, and read those in the light of each other.

My grandmother has the BEM, my mother's late brother had the MBE (his name and face are even on Saint Helenian stamps), my mother's cousin still has it, their grandfather did, one of my great mentors since he was my Senior Tutor as an undergraduate also has it, my godmother has the OBE, and so does another mentor who was one of my Campaign Patrons when I stood for Parliament, an election at which my Proposer, of blessed memory, had the BEM. And so on.

But what precise thing has Rachel Riley ever done to "combat anti-Semitism"? She has been given the MBE because she sued small media outlets that failed to curtsy low enough to her, and because she at least condoned physical violence against Jeremy Corbyn. She must have known what the reaction would be, but that reaction was still libellous because she was on the telly and thus a Very Important Person.

Well, it is already illegal after all to call Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser, so now he should sue Riley for calling him an anti-Semite and for at least condoning physical violence against him. Who is the More Important Person? A Member of Parliament of 40 years' standing, and a member of the Privy Council to boot? Or the glamorous assistant on a game show, even with the MBE?

By the way, successive padmates and I were very fond of that game show. I was good at the wordy bits, while they, although by their own admission men of limited formal education, were good at the sums. Yes, of course I know why. Not least, they well and truly told me.

And what is the "anti-Semitism" that we are expected to believe that Riley has "combated"? The IHRA Definition, which it must be said that the Labour Party adopted under Corbyn in one of his many disappointments to huge numbers of us, would forbid any criticism of the new Israeli Government. Such criticism is probably already a criminal offence. Keir Starmer's Crown Prosecution Service would press charges for harassment, to which there is in practice no defence, and even arrange for trial by a state employee sitting alone, if anyone sufficiently grand claimed to have been alarmed or distressed by it. What does a telly dolly have to do to be bumped up to OBE?

2 comments:

  1. Anyone would think you were courting another prosecution.

    ReplyDelete