300 Responses to Weekend Thread 5 June 2021

  1. StewGreen says:

    That Ed Hussain book exposing UK mosques.
    A new book reveals that profoundly illiberal and extreme ideas are still flourishing in many British mosques. Review by Jawad Iqbal

    … Its author visits Didsbury Mosque in south Manchester. Soon he comes across people hauling banners and Palestinian flags into the mosque; posters urging support for an aid organisation accused of links with extremists; the “Sharia Department” (a parallel and unregulated legal system for Islamic marriages and divorces); and lastly the raised voices of men arguing about Middle Eastern politics.
    The act of worship feels almost incidental to everything else that’s going on. It sends a chill down the spine to think that Salman Abedi, a worshipper at this mosque, went on to kill 22 people in the Manchester Arena suicide bomb attack in 2017.

    The troubling reality is that Islam in Britain is dominated by an ultra-orthodox version of the faith promoted by a sect known as the Deobandis. They control almost half of all Britain’s mosques. similar to Taliban

    In Dewsbury — he notices the absence of women; there are no spaces allocated for women to pray.
    he is bluntly told: “You’re an intelligent man, but there can be no discussion of there being women in the mosque.
    Deobandis play a significant role in the training of Islamic scholars in Britain !

    – Bradford forbid their children to take part in drama and theatre, activities viewed as alien and corrupting:
    people as physically in Britain but mentally living elsewhere.

    – Manchester , asks an imam whether he condemns those who believe it is justified to kill anyone who “insults the Prophet”. All he gets by way of reply is evasion and sophistry

    Segregation is a subtext running through the pages of this book. “Where are all the white English people of this city?”
    “Gone with the wind,” the cabbie tells him.
    – Blackburn – A group of young white men tell him they are scared of entering “no-go areas”
    This urban apartheid doesn’t bode well for social cohesion in the longer term.

    Blackburn bookshop : insists that it is a sin to “enjoy dancing and listening to music” and to “like and be attracted to the customs of the kuffar [unbelievers]”.
    Bradford bookshop – he discovers works glorifying violent jihad by Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian godfather of Islamist terror
    …. Such books are banned in Muslim countries across the Middle East !
    (quotes some positives, : moderate mosques, 5% of mosque management now by women)

    Muslims are too often treated as a monolithic religious bloc. This underplays their sheer racial and ethnic diversity in terms of geographical origins, languages spoken, political views and cultural practices.
    The truth is beyond Friday prayers most have little contact with mosques,
    so Husain is giving a partial view of what Muslim Britain thinks
    and ignoring the non-practising//
    The book shows why the dream of moderate Islam is not happening in the UK

    £££ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/among-the-mosques-a-journey-across-muslim-britain-ed-husain-review-idealogues-vfkcwtgtn

    Comments are the same as we would make here
    “why are these extremists allowed to propagate a hostility and contempt towards non-Muslims, or “Kuffars”?
    Why are they also allowed to violate the sex discrimination laws by not given women equal access to worship?”

       33 likes

    • Thoughtful says:

      It really does show the level of hypocrisy and anti White race hate amongst the metropolitan elites that if “whose real name is” says something like this, wheich he has done, it is immediately consigned by the elites into one of their “this is fauxbik so we don’t have to do anything” drawers.

      As it is an effnik has written a book, which they find difficult to decry, so they mouth a few platitudes, before consigning it to the “we don’t have to so anything drawer!

      Readers however should be enormously pleased about all this, after all, this is the result of the Saudi oil bribe money furthering the interests of Islam in the UK, but it does mean you don’tr have to pay your political leaders the going rate for the job, and can save a hs’penny once every ten years as a result.

      Is it worth it ?

         17 likes

    • vlad says:

      I wonder if Al Beeb will do one of their fearless undercover reports on dodgy mosques?

         5 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        Tricky one.

        The faithful are pretty thick so the BBC often likes to nudge along with guides.

        And they can be hard to locate, popping up as they do over kebab shops, meth labs, sweetie shops…..

           1 likes

    • Up2snuff says:

      It is widely assumed that the two (probably) instances of Jesus clearing the Temple of merchants and money changers was ‘God v. Mammon’ ie. God (of the poor) being against the rich and wealthy. That is a misunderstanding.

      It was necessary for faithful Jews to pay a Temple Tax with ‘Temple money’ hence the money changers. However, the money-changers had set up their stalls in the Court of the Gentiles, they should have been just outside the Temple Courts. On the back of the trading of the money changers, other merchants had come into the Court of the Gentiles – despite the Law which said no work should be done on the Sabbath – and set about business right under the nose of the High Priest. I wonder if any bribery and corruption was involved? The rate of exchange for the Temple tax as well as for the various offerings was set down in statute, but by Jesus’ time, there was a certain amount of overcharging – thievery – going on.

      The Court of the Gentiles was where non-Semites and those in the process of becoming Jews would come to worship God, to pray and learn more of the Scriptures. There was a separate Court of the Women, for Jewish women, where women would pray and learn more of Scripture. Of course that would be changed, in the very near future, by Calvary and Pentecost.

      That was why Jesus as God was enraged: “My house is the house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves.” In those days, God was enraged at the obstructions placed in the way of all (non-Semitic) peoples to come to know Him and to worship and learn.

      Obstructing the worship of their god by women says much about the religion of Islam. The fact that that the ‘Liberal (leftist/Socialist) establishment’ look the other way over this says much about them.

      Thank you, Stew, for an informative post.

         8 likes

  2. StewGreen says:

    M-fest : A Festival of
    MUSLIM KNOWLEDGE AND CREATIVITY

    “in partnership with British Library”
    https://www.mfest.org/what-s-on

    (They missed out “The” in The British Library)

       18 likes

    • JimS says:

      As does the library, viz.

      British Library
      96 Euston Road
      London
      NW1 2DB

      Seems to be the fashion, also followed by Tate, British Museum and commercial irritations like Brindleyplace or our friends, BBC.

         9 likes

    • Ian Rushlow says:

      Well, there’s no definitive article (word for ‘the’) in Urdu or Chinese, so it probably makes a lot of sense for the comrades in this example. The term ‘government’ rather than ‘the government’ has been in common usage for a long time. I suspect the lack of ‘the’ is to indicate they think are talking about something which is not merely definitive but ultimate, so important that it somehow transcends the normal rules and conventions of the English language.

         8 likes

    • theisland says:

      https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1972/54/section/1
      British Library Act 1972

      Starts with:
      1 The British Library.
      (1) This Act shall have effect with a view to the establishment for the United Kingdom of a national library, to be known as “the British Library”, consisting of a comprehensive collection of books, manuscripts, periodicals, films and other recorded matter, whether printed or otherwise.

         8 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      Actually my main point was : look at the list of events at this weekends Muslim-Fest

         3 likes

  3. Guest Who says:

    There’s news.

    And what the world envies. Apparently.

       2 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Then there’s CBS.

      Seems their audience is pretty much the bbc core too.

         12 likes

    • Charlie Farley says:

      Guest Who
      We have the same ” Sea Snot” being collected by Border Farce and RNLI every day…..serious health risk are they paid danger money ?
      To think I used to give money to support RNLI…NEVER AGAIN !

         15 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        Such a shame.

        I am on the mailing list as we donated before.

        They are desperate. And can’t seem to grasp why and how long it will persist.

           2 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        RNLI doesn’t need your money
        It could survive for years without new donations cos it sits on massive endowments
        “According to RNLI’s annual accounts for the year to 31 December 2018, the RNLI had consolidated net assets of £709m and held £125m in free reserves”

           4 likes

        • Ian Rushlow says:

          A friend of mine worked for the RNLI as a volunteer – brave man. However, his advice was not to make donations, as they were raking it in from the salvage rights they received for rescuing ships.

             5 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      BTW as I said before The phytoplankton bloom seems to bea plague that arises every so often 10, 20 years if conditions line up
      The main reason for the increasing size is raw effluent coming out of Istanbul

         4 likes

  4. Guest Who says:

    BBC Pidgin gets hold of this… comedic gold.

       5 likes

  5. taffman says:

    “Channel crossings: Patel calls on social media companies to take down videos”

    Has she lost the plot? Blaming the media for the “dinghy divers” now.
    What do we pay our military for ? Before long the whole of the EU will send all their illegals to the UK and laugh at our government’s incompetence.

       32 likes

    • JimS says:

      If you knock on my front door and ask for help I have a moral obligation to consider that request.

      If you climb over my garden wall you are a criminal.

      Simple?

         23 likes

      • Ian Rushlow says:

        With the proviso that if the person climbing over the wall was a Vulnerable Person ™, Person of Color ™ or other Member of a Disadvantaged Minority ™, then they are fully entitled to climb over your garden wall, break into your house, steal your possessions and assault you. After all, they are only addressing centuries of historic injustice and you should be welcoming the vibrancy they are adding to your life.

           29 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        Dressing as a chav and trying to claim ‘officer’ status to sell a TV licence may see the request given short shrift.

           5 likes

  6. Guest Who says:

    Followed by most of the BBC sane ones*

    Marianna might need to check that, if anyone can reach her any more.

       7 likes

  7. StewGreen says:

    7:57am our BBC local radio news promoting today’s XR stunt
    against sea level rise *

    Simultaneously Simon Reeve read this week’s Radio4 charity appeal for Marine Conservation Society
    Heavily crafted and sounded political
    cos although it focused on beach plastic
    the money could end up used on Global Warming campaigning.

    * Sea Level general rises as we come out of an ice age
    nothing human beings will do in the next 50 years will cause the sea level to start falling.

       15 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      As ever the XR signs are wrong
      … melting Arctic sea ice does not cause any proper sea level rise
      .. but if the ice were on land say on Greenland it would.

      Even then it’s an extremely slow effect as it’s like dropping solitary ice cubes into a swimming pool.
      taking tens of thousands of years to give major metres of rise.

         15 likes

      • Old Goat says:

        Loonies on a beach. I am wishing for a one-in-a-hundred wave…

           21 likes

      • Charlie Farley says:

        StewGreen
        A bunch of King Canutes then !
        Good analogy with ice cubes…never ceases to amaze me how much rubbish science is taught to our children these days with the help of BBC bias and left wing Teachers

           12 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Stew, guess those guys missed GCSE Physics (where you do the ice cube thing in a graduated beaker) ‘cos it was on a Friday and they were ‘on strike with Greta’ !

        Was that GCSE or Primary School? I probably did it in Primary School ‘cos we were taught proper in them days. It probably is GCSE Physics now, with the correct ‘safety equipment’ and ‘risk assessment’ first, thanks to the dumbing down of education.

           7 likes

      • Thoughtful says:

        The go to man about this is Swedish (for a change) sea level scientist Nils Axel Morner who has been at this for decades and says there is no detectable change in fact levels might even have fallen.

           2 likes

  8. StewGreen says:

    7am R4Sunday show
    heavily crafted propaganda throughout

    They had Fauci on and focussed entirely on his HIV work
    totally ignoring recent controversy with his Covid emails.

    The show seems to have almost zero listeners
    so why the effort ?
    Maybe they re-use segments on the World Service and television.

       14 likes

    • Guest Who says:

      Much on the bbc attracts few.

         2 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      Despite it being a religion show
      nothing was mentioned about religion in the Fauci item

      One item was Amanda Khozi Mukwashi head of Christian Aid pushing her agendas
      ‘UK is evil if it cuts foreign aid
      we must pay to vaccinate the third world’ etc.

      Then a clip of Gordon Brown saying that was played.

      Oh they had another activist NGO head as well
      more Global Warming agenda

         4 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        The show blurb is blank today
        – Fauci about Aids work
        – The UKs credibility in G7 will be undermined if it doesn’t reverse aid cuts back to the 0.7% rule.
        item that featured both the female NGO heads
        – item on walking parish bounds
        – 123 child bodies found at Canadian Catholic church residential school (indigenous children from last 100 years)

           0 likes

        • StewGreen says:

          – rules on remarriage in the Catholic church
          – conservative Australian minister condemned for using a map of Islamic institutions when talking about Political Islam and extremism
          cos some righties put warning signs outside such mosques/sites.

             3 likes

    • tomo says:

      Fauci’s HIV work ?

      iirc his morals and methods have been challenged there – if there’s one thing that is emerging about the good doctor is that his public persona is very, very carefully crafted to conceal a vain, egotistical, status obsessed, near megalomaniac bureaucrat intent on preserving his status as the highest paid self licking ice cream cone in US Federal employ.

         3 likes

  9. AsISeeIt says:

    From Lady Godiva sent to Coventry to the Telegraph’s anti-sex league – more of both later…

    Share vaccines or climate deal will fail, rich countries told‘ – or so the Observer insists this morning. I’m afraid I fail to see the connection.

    Of course if you’re a Guardian on Sunday reader with utopian global ambitions and you’re steeped in the new religion of global warming, then it makes perfect sense to muddle the two issues.

    Whisper this, as it sounds like a bit of a conspiracy theory, but there are those who suggest we may find certain elements of our government’s innovative lockdown policies will be prolonged indefinately – and be justified in that extention by the supposed climate change emergency.

    There’s undoubtedly a good deal of potential crossover in the propagation of official and indeed corporate messaging that raises the spectres of imminent fear and crisis in our minds, so as to psychologically manipulate our political responses and economic behaviours.

    The Observer meanwhile revels in the perversion and trashing of our history and traditions – read these next two headlines and feel the subtext of snarky anti-English triumphalism. Apropriately enough Triumph was once part of the doomed British Leyland: ‘The battered, supine statue of Colston is now a potent memorial to our past‘ and ‘Dancers perform alongside a parade of cars built in Coventry as the city begins its year as UK city of culture. Yesterday’s celebration, delayed by Covid, included a parade of (fully clothed) Lady Godivas‘ – well, we wouldn’t want to offend Sharia sensibilities, would we?

    There was apparently no such fear of pride in his public exposure for former BBC acting star John Barrowman. Although he may have taken the notion of out and proud a little too far when he mounted his own privates pride parades: ‘“Flasher” row star pulls out… of money spinning panto role‘ (Daily Star Sunday) ‘Oh no he isn’t!‘ – Oh yes, I’m afraid he did – ‘…he was accused of exposing himself on TV sets‘ – Whatever floats your carnival float, I suppose. Personally, I have a framed photo of the dog and a bubble lamp on mine. I jest of course, it went back to Rumbelows when I cancelled my TV licence – oh yes it did!

    There’s pride in tradition and there’s hopeless refusal to move on. The Sunday People are stuck in the habit of endlessly recycling the past: ‘Maddie cops’ new clue‘ – sorry, is it considered bad taste and regarded as upsetting and too soon – to make gags that remind readers of holidays to Portugal?

    Probe after psychic solves two other cases‘ – so it must be true.

    The Sunday Telegraph tells us that their cartoonist ‘Matt is away‘ – I hope he’s enjoying his hols. I’m imagining him on a beach somewhere relaxed on a sketched sun lounger shaded by a cartoon sun shade. Whilst in the Sunday Times their in house comic illustrator Newman delivers as usual. He has the disheveled blonde mop top Boris reading his G7 vaccine pledge whilst a frustated aide remarks: “You promised to eliminate all over-promising by 2021

    And big Tory promises that fail to materialise lead us nicely to the The Mail On Sunday headline: ‘Migrants: Priti pins blame on Facebook and TikTok

    The BBC – which is corporately convinced there ought to be much more restrictive controls on its new media internet rivals – explains for us: ‘Channel crossings: Patel calls on social media companies to take down videos‘ – and there’s some truth to the notion that were it not for social media we might not even know there was a problem.

    What about the customary celeb female angst features, I hear you ask?

    In the Telegraph: ‘Katie Glass. Why I’m pleased I’m not having sex‘ – and… alongside that insight into modern social habits – draw your own conclusions here: ‘The Kemps. Martin & Roman on male depression

       19 likes

  10. Guest Who says:

    Needs to run on a loop on the HoC lobby.

       30 likes

    • Sluff says:

      Don’t have the technology skills to show it but further down the twitter list of this excellent video is an excellent visual summary of the benefits to women of the US second amendment.

         7 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        “an excellent visual summary of the benefits to women of the US second amendment.”
        Not sure what you mean ?
        images appear to be just memes
        I don’t see the words “women” or “amendment” mentioned.

        The claim about “peaceful talk” .. they’ll hide behind that she said ” I will fight, and fight”
        They also said their board insists on a “2 minute speaking rule”

        There is the full video
        Tatiana Ibrahim BLASTS the school board for teaching ‘police hate’, LGBT homophobia and communism. https://youtu.be/zxu3wdiXRF0

        Further down another video show Twitter Jack at a live event as goons try to stop a woman talking
        “see Jack it’s not that easy to cancel someone in real life”

           2 likes

        • Sluff says:

          Maybe what I had in mind has disappeared under the weight of more recent replies because I cannot find it either now.
          Something similar is available.

          Try putting this in a search engine, and look for photos and then maga or meme.
          ‘women with #2A gun rights versus women without gun rights’

          Long winded but you get there in the end.
          Should have done GCSE in IT.

             0 likes

    • Old Goat says:

      Not much, if any, supportive applause…

         4 likes

      • Guest Who says:

        Like ‘likes’, polls, petitions, etc, I tend to judge on the argument presented and hope that secret ballots will attract a majority like me.

           8 likes

    • Thoughtful says:

      Frightening when the Commie / Nazi tried to stop her speaking by suggesting the speaker was threatening her.

      Calm & peaceful? This is what happens with how the left twist words to a new meaning. give them a fraction of a millimetre “Well I feel threatened” therefore it isn’t calm and peaceful.

      NO reasonable person would expect someone who is angry to not sound angry, but if the left is allow to silence them on the grounds they feel threatened then every single opinion which they disagree with is going to meet that criteria.

      So the law would have to be – to prevent the greedy weasels making money that unless physical violence is absolutely immenent there can be no silencing of a speaker, although they would probably find a way to twist words into that too.

         3 likes

  11. Sluff says:

    On Toady on Sunday, the BBC are bigging up the theme of the day. The utterly preposterous claim from the leftoid wokes and a few ‘worthy’ others, that the ‘credibility of the UK’ will be reduced at the G7 if we reduce the overseas aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5%. Even temporarily, and given the £300 bn annual deficit.

    Since this reduction will still leave us higher than Italy, France, Japan, Canada, and the US, quite how the wokes can justify their idiocy was, needless to say on the BBC, never asked.

    And i suppose giving away hundreds of millions of AZ vaccine doses at cost doesn’t count.

    Totally pathetic BBC really dredging the very bottom of the barrel for any anti-government angle they can find.

       44 likes

    • JimS says:

      Foreign aid is colonialist, imperialist, patriarchal and white supremacist, unless it is funded entirely by a tax levied on the Alphabet and BAME ‘communities’ only.

         27 likes

  12. Tabs says:

    During the Andrew Marr Show whilst interviewing Tony Blair (again), Marr said, “The vaccine takeup in over 50’s is 25% less for black people. That is discrimination.”

    He might as well have added “it is also climate change” as the truth doesn’t matter on the BBC.

       41 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      @Tabs Did Marr mean what you claim ?
      You made me watch the clip of Marr & Blair
      Marr is actually arguing against Blair
      Saying Blair is creating one set of rules for the vaccinated : freedom
      And another for the unvaccinated who would be banned from pubs , flights
      Blair tries to palm off that argument saying that discrimination is a good word which has become a “loaded” word
      And that “discrimination is part of risk management”.

      No what Marr means is “UNFAIR discrimination”
      and that we usually drop the word “unfair”

      And Marr seeks to illustrate that by saying
      the group that is vaccinated includes practically all white people
      Yet the group that CHOOSE to be UNvaccinated includes a lot of black people
      So black people in general are more impacted by policies against the unvaccinated.

      You could make a law banning big black hats in North London
      .. and since that would impact orthodox Jewish men more than anyone else
      So isn’t than *unfair discrimination* ?

      Video

         2 likes

      • Tabs says:

        Marr’s argument of discrimation is not valid in my opinion.

        As there is nothing stopping black people getting a free vaccination there cannot be discrimation. If, for example, drug dealers are mostly black and and the police arrest drug dealers that is not discrimination either.

        Likewise if the law changes to give longer jail sentences to child rape gang members that would not be discrimination against Muslim.

           11 likes

        • Sluff says:

          Isn’t this an example of equality of opportunity versus equality of outcomes?

          Socialism is increasingly about the latter.
          To give Blair his due therefore, he as a social democrat, as long as people have a fair chance of receiving a vaccine, we should not allow their refusal to do so to be used as leverage to deny the rest of us a return to something like normality.

             2 likes

          • Up2snuff says:

            Sure, Sluff, Tony Blair is a social democrat when he gets his own way but he doesn’t like it when people object to his Gulf 2 War and his Press Officer used to get upset and swear and throw phones when newspapers refused to swallow the New Labour line from No.10.

               1 likes

      • Thoughtful says:

        Two things here.

        a) BLiar is wrong that vaccination prevents people catching covid and being infectious, it does neither, it merely lessens the severity of the symptoms.

        b) Bliar does nothing without being handsomely rewarded, he’s straight out of Hilary Clintons big book of how to enrich yourself once you leave office, so who is paying him to say these things.

        As for Marr it’s just typical BBC leftist bias all about the Blacks because he cares nothing for the hated White majority forced under duress to pay his enormous wages.

           4 likes

  13. StewGreen says:

    “People believing Madeleine McCann has been found because a *clairvoyant*
    said he knows where she is buried”

    Daily Mirror made a click bait BS article

       10 likes

  14. StewGreen says:

    Slavery ?
    \\ Since the rise of the terrorist organization Boko Haram, children — mainly Christian, but also Muslim — are kidnapped and forced into slavery.
    The girls are distributed among the terrorists to be “married” as concubines, and the boys are beaten and brainwashed into becoming child soldiers //
    https://FreeNigerianSlaves.org/

       17 likes

  15. JohnC says:

    Stop the Press : headline news:
    TB Joshua: Influential Nigerian preacher dies at 57
    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57374250
    What caught my eye was
    ‘YouTube suspended his account due to allegations of hate speech after a rights body filed a complaint over videos showing the preacher conducting prayers to “cure” gay people.’
    Is that really ‘hate speech’ ?.
    I was also reading how facebook has banned Trump for 2 years. It seems their self-appointed ‘watchdog’ (who the BBC refer to as if they are an independent authority) which told them to re-evaluate the ban in 6 months is a complete farce (as we knew it would be).
    The social media giants are out of control with their political agenda now. Yet nobody is saying anything about it. Just imagine the uproar in the media if they were playing these dirty game to push a right-wing agenda.

       31 likes

  16. Guest Who says:

    When Labour speaks, the BBC writes.

    Education x 3

       10 likes

    • Sluff says:

      This is another example of the ‘virtue spiral’.

      In this scenario a woke identified item, in this case ‘safe’ becomes the all-pervading mantra. Singular. Absolutist. Nothing else matters. But a. It is not defined and b. The minimum/ maxima are not described.

      Therefore there is no ‘pass mark’ for, in this case, ‘safe’, and so the great and the good try to prove their virtue by trying to outdo each other, hence the virtue spiral.

      So we transition gradually from one jab for the elderly to save lives to free jabs for the whole world irrespective of age to minimise transmission and new variants ‘because no- one is safe until we’re all safe’.

      The winners are those in certain health care sectors and the public sector. The losers are all the rest of us. But we don’t count.

      The introduction of ever lower speed limits on more and more of our roads by local traffic officials with little else to do is another example of this same phenomena.

         19 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      As thick as mince

         7 likes

  17. tomo says:

    Asfaw Yemiru- one might reasonably expect some coverage of such a figure in workaday coverage of the world – but the BBC has an obit, gleaned from other obits…..

    Not fit for purpose

    …..his school survived coup, rebellion and humanitarian crisis.

    Almost single-handedly he grew it from a beaten earth patch shaded by a tree, where he first taught street children in about 1960, to a double campus today offering the full primary curriculum. So good are the results that Asra Hawariat, which means “Footsteps of the Apostles”, routinely tops annual grade tables. In all he was responsible for educating 120,000 pupils.

    On the occasions when he was picked up by the security forces, detention rarely lasted long. So numerous are his alumni that he would soon find a friendly official, policeman or community leader to intervene on his behalf.

    This was Asfaw’s first encounter with Addis, then the imperial seat of Ras Tafari, better known by his crown name Haile Selassie. The little boy felt he belonged so after briefly returning to Bulga he ran away, back to the capital, surviving on his wits, sleeping for a year among the graves of a city centre cemetery.
    ….
    His life changed when an Armenian woman dropped some of her groceries. Asfaw rushed to pick up the shopping before it spoilt, a good Samaritan gesture rewarded with a domestic job in her household. When not doing chores, he enrolled at school for the first time in his life, cramming eight years of primary syllabus into two.

    A scholarship followed, to the General Wingate School, named in honour of Orde Wingate the colourful British officer who helped to drive Italian occupiers out of Ethiopia. Its common room of colonial-era diaspora teachers helped Asfaw to become fluent in English.

    Soon he was putting word round the same graveyards and street corners that he used to inhabit, urging waifs to come to him for schooling. After his own school hours were done and still in his teens, he would turn from student to teacher, convening ad hoc classes under a tree between the Wingate campus and the Church of Petros and Paulos. The roll surged, helped in part because Asfaw made sure that all scraps from the refectory at Wingate were not thrown away but offered to his new pupils.

    Committed to teaching, he left Wingate without graduating but not before petitioning the emperor for support. With a waft of the imperial hand, the land surrounding the original tree was transferred in perpetuity to the new school.

    In the early days the pupils chipped in by building what they could. Often only a fence separated classrooms so a teacher’s voice could carry allowing two classes to be taught at once. Asfaw moved onsite to a shack, living there for years, hardly bothered when the roof let in the rain.

    Visitors would find children sleeping on shelves, tumbling to the floor when their classes began. Asfaw was a man of strong Christian faith, praying routinely, and driven in part by nagging self-doubt, fretting whether the students were going to become good citizens, good neighbours. He was a voracious reader and student of contemporary thinking; a friend remembers him being fascinated by a theory of modernising traditional education espoused in the book Deschooling Society.

    Self-deprecating almost to a fault, Asfaw courted little publicity. When he was persuaded to attend a ceremony in Sweden to receive the World Children’s’ Prize for the Rights of the Child in 2001, he had to borrow a suit and a pair of shoes.

    Late in life he married a former student, Senayet. She survives him along with their two daughters, Liya and Besiem, and a son, Yisihaq. All of them won scholarships to American universities.

    Thousands of former students turned out for his funeral, watching solemnly as the coffin bearing their “Gashe” [guide] was interred not far from the tree-shaded spot where he first began teaching.

    Asfaw Yemiru, Ethiopian school founder, was born c 1941. He died of pneumonia on May 8, 2021, aged about 80

       2 likes

  18. StewGreen says:

    The cackhanded NHS IT system seems to have problms talking to its different Covid vaccination databases.
    They just sent me an email “You can now choose an earlier date for your coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination appointment”
    Well 10 days ago they’d sent me a text saying that since I had already had my second vax they’d cancelled my original second appointment

    Seems to me they are having trouble joining up the two routes
    #1 I went through the website booking and ended up with a late vaccination centre appointment
    .. whereas the neighbours waiting and got quick appointments at the GP
    #2 They all got a quick second vax at the GP
    so I emailed the GP and got added to their vax list

    #3 Had the vax at my GP
    #4 They told me to go online to cancel my old appointment
    But when I went to the NHS online system it wouldn’t let me as if the GP one had replaced it
    #5 2 weeks later got a text msg saying my second original vax had been cancelled since I’d already had it
    #6 Now 10 days after the system send me an email offering an earlier appointment.

    .. I just checked the online booking system again
    my my second original vax date is not there

       7 likes

  19. Scroblene says:

    Note for JohnC, who posted earlier about the cost of wind turbines and their failure ever to recoup that cost, mainly because they’re useless!

    http://www.cityunslicker.co.uk/2021/04/inflation-ahoy.html

    I occasionall have chats with Nick Drew elsewhere, and he is really on the ball, and have actually met the main commenter, Elby the Berserk and his gorgeous wife, so it must be true! Elby gives us so much more info and also knows his stuff about this particular failure in public spending!

    (Sorry Fed, to be tardy on this post, I was out in the garden…)!

       7 likes

    • JohnC says:

      But it’s an excellent excuse to channel taxpayers cash.
      And that’s what it’s all about. Corruption on an epic scale.

         8 likes

    • Eddy Booth says:

      I go camping and have a small solar panel for charging my tablet.
      If wind turbines were efficient surely there’d be a similar little portable version

         9 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        If i went camping with a car a tablet could be recharged from the cigarette lighter/ USB socket.
        otherwise I might take a power bank that I bought for £2
        I’m guessing that over 3 years the solar panel still costs more than the powerbank way
        .. both in money and CO2 footprint.
        A solar panel on a boat might save a few pence year.

           8 likes

  20. Fedup2 says:

    A small item in the DT yesterday talked about the need to reform OFCOM . It said that out of the 17 ! Yes 17 members of the ‘content ‘ board 11 were former employees of the BBC –

    Might as well make it the full 17 eh?

    It doesn’t say what the other 6 did but my guess is C4 or the Labour Party ….
    It’s not just the BBC which needs to go ….

    If you care to look at the CV s of the OFCOM/BBC content board you will find an explanation as to why the BBC can be a lefty anti British monster without any real control .

    The BBC retirees on that board will be all over GBnews like a rash …

       26 likes

    • Dobyns says:

      Fedup2, this is the same situation as would occur with the proposed Oversight Board composed of “experienced journalists” for al beeb.

      ‘Birds of a feather’ comes to mind.

      Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

         10 likes

  21. davylars says:

    Not BBC, but same thing.

    Love the reply

    D675-CB25-99-BC-40-E2-A501-40-EA673-F3-B7-B.jpg

       36 likes

  22. Robot says:

    Re. AsIseeIt:

    Entertaining and enlightening summary as usual.

       7 likes

  23. Jack in the Green says:

    Couple of things. When Miss Marple married that bloke who people used to like, her dad was vilified because he could see what was coming. What he said at the time seemed reasonable to me. So the media went on a hate the stupid old white bloke mission. I remember thinking – well we shall see won’t we?
    Secondly. GMTV. That bloke O’Leary, you know, the one who seems to think a lot of the IRA. Haranguing and bullying a woman on air because she dared to question this vaccination business. No free speech on the ITV then.
    Quite honestly, if there is an evil empire it is the media.

       14 likes

  24. The WestWyvern says:

    I’m listening to Test Match Special Cricket on 5live sports extra. It really is pathetic.

    There is a fielding position called ‘third man’. Usually the fielder takes this position on the boundary.

    The bloody idiocy of wokery pokery beloved of the anti Beeb has the commentary team unable to say ‘man’. When the ball is hit to this position they call it the ‘third boundary’.

    FFS.

    Funny how they love referring to ‘men’ in headline when the story doesn’t fit their narratives.

    Scum.

       40 likes

  25. StewGreen says:

    English Heritage’ box ticking campaign was mentioned ealier

    https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/black-history/

       3 likes

  26. StewGreen says:

    Latest blue plaque Pari Indian guy who once studied in England for a year then visited a couple of time.
    He met Marian was a British woman, from Tower Hamlets whose brother worked as a clerk in the docks of London. Together the couple had a number of children, the first born in Bombay in 1853, then econd
    The couple subsequently returned to UK for the lat 10 year of hi life as the Parsi community in India did not accept their marriage.

    Ardaseer had a wife in India, Avabai, who he left there when he migrated to UK. The children from both women sometimes intermarrying amongst themselves

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardaseer_Cursetjee

       5 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      Parsi Indian guy : my “s” key is playing up today

         3 likes

      • Fedup2 says:

        Now that the language has been changed – doing away with ‘Indian ‘ and replacing it with ‘delta ‘ perhaps every other reference to ‘Indians ‘ should be amended.

        So – played cowboys and deltas as a kid .

           9 likes

  27. Fedup2 says:

    Sunday evening – engerland kneeling event – followed by 90 minutes of dire soulless friendly footy as an add on .

    I think it’s on woke ITV . No booing will be heard – plenty of clapping on the happy clappy track – a sermon from coloured pundits and a potential ‘off switch ‘ …,

       15 likes

    • TrickCyclist says:

      Presenter Mark Pougatch and pundits Ashley Cole, Ian Wright & Roy Keane just took turns to decry fans booing.
      ‘Gareth Southgate and the players have made it clear why they’re taking the knee’ was the gist, ‘it’s about injustice.’
      Oh, I remember Southgate, he’s the one who took the Pizza Hut dollar after missing the penalty in ’96.

      Edit: Booing can clearly be heard at the kick-off, but camera angles are carefully chosen to show concentrations of the crowd who are all clapping. Surely choreographed?
      Two Romanian players stayed on their feet.

         18 likes

      • Fedup2 says:

        Yes – promoting obesity – principles and self interest – I suppose he is after a knighthood for services to kneeling – granted by Lord Rashford of foodbanks ….

        Thankfully plenty of booing ….

           16 likes

  28. Guest Who says:

    Lies with dogs.

       5 likes

    • Northern Voter says:

      Here’s my question Soapy,

      Are your dogs as woke and weft wing as you pair appear to be?

         9 likes

  29. StewGreen says:

    Saturday BBC so-called local news
    – “Mother says there should be more disability awareness”

    – East Yorkshire : Another Climate mural unveiled
    “the time is now” on a Hull wall

    – Lincolnshire, Market Weighton: “Lesbian Blue Plaque was unveiled to Anne Lister who inspired Gentleman Jack with her “marriage” to Ann Walker in 1820″

    The surprising thing is they didn’t mention there is already an Anne Lister plaque in York

    The second surprising thing is they didn’t mention there is already an Anne Lister plaque in Halifax

    E0ECRBPXoAAddfQ?format=png&name=small

    D35LVO3X4AAR0R3?format=jpg&name=small

       5 likes

  30. taffman says:

    “Channel crossings: Patel calls on social media companies to take down videos”
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57373084
    Why?
    IMHO. Because it exposes the inadequacies of the Home Office and in turn, our present government to the people of this nation. In one word – Censorship!
    Wasn’t Nigel Farage and others, hounded by the police for exposing the invading criminals?
    The nation and people are at risk because of the abject failure of the government to secure our borders. As the weather improves the numbers will explode as the EU sees the UK as the place to deport all its unwanted migrants that were originally invited in to Europe by Mrs Merkel &C0.

    I am afraid the “lessons to be learned” from this ongoing catastrophe will be very costly.

       22 likes

    • taffman says:

      “Kent council in child migrant legal threat to Home Secretary”
      https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-57369175
      As the invasion is fast becoming a national emergency where are the MPs for Kent?
      Is there a Tory among them ? I suspect that the people of Dover will be very unhappy with their Member of Parliament .

         14 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      You sort of think that someone who hates Patel in the Home office suggested putting such a dumb message out – to show how out of touch she Is with the anger of the sensible British taxpayer
      – watching our French enemy exporting its ‘ rubbish to us with no fear of returns reprisals or penalties …

         16 likes

      • taffman says:

        Fedup2
        What is more, to add insult to injury, we are paying the French £ millions to prevent this movement of population to our shores . All on the same day that a British Normandy Memorial is unveiled in France to honour veterans.
        What are our noble”veterans” thinking now? This is how France and the EU repays us……………
        https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57373932

           15 likes

  31. Sluff says:

    Woman in America has child.
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57378117

       10 likes

    • Dobyns says:

      The Markle-Sparkles are mentally ill IMO.

      Their continued, craven attempts to curry public favour repeatedly demonstrate it.

         8 likes

      • Northern Voter says:

        I’d just like to say that I think Ginger Whinger and his wife Megan the Murky must think that if the Royal family are taken in by this absolute load of grovelling, they must be sadly mistaken. The mistake they made early on, was to employ an American PR team. They (thePR) people have no idea of the thinking of the British general public. Still, if they listen to the tosh pushed by the bBBC there’s no wonder they keep shooting themselves and their clients GW & MtM in the foot.Or is that feet?

           5 likes

  32. StewGreen says:

    What are Countryfile agenda’s today
    Norfolk/Suffolk

    – Matt gets his fingers dirty gardening and feels the heat of the forge at a social enterprise
    that is harnessing the healing power of the rural landscape and training homeless people in traditional skills
    “with homelessness on the rise for the past 5 years”
    .. has it ?

    – Charlotte meets farmers making Britain’s only raw brie
    – she sets sail with a lady fisherman who swapped a job in logistics for lobsters and whelks

    – Adam Henson looks at biobanks for rare breeds.

    – Farmer against the Australian trade deal.

    And what’s Tom Heap pushing ?
    … maybe his electric car, cos the charging station went wrong again.

       13 likes

    • StewGreen says:

      Charlotte “And fishing is STILL a largely male dominated industry !”

      The focus is on the female whelk fisherman
      but her husband Nigel appears to in charge

         10 likes

      • StewGreen says:

        “And what could be the COST of the new Australian trade deal be ?”
        … searching out negatives
        but not positives.

        “Australia’s lower welfare standards”

        Colin “do you really think hey will buy our lamb/beef”
        ..doh they will buy our expensive top Quality … and tech stuff
        and send us cheap mass production stuff.

        In Australia many food products are much more expensive than here eg a lot of fruit.

           9 likes

  33. StewGreen says:

    Local BBC news “secret local man left with a HMRC £170K chargefor using pay by loan scheme”
    … wonder if he is a BBC employee.

       6 likes

  34. StewGreen says:

    7pm BBC1 ..BAFTAs ..two hours of smugness

    7pm-10pm BBC4 Benjamin Britten

    10pm Afua Hirsch : art in Africa Senegal

       10 likes

  35. StewGreen says:

    BBC Picture desk Just as reliable as the Guardian

       9 likes

    • Fedup2 says:

      Makes you wonder is bbc types know where Norfolk / Suffolk is – which actually might be a good thing for the people who live there

         9 likes

      • Up2snuff says:

        Further down the Tweet line there was an interesting one about the UK:Australia Trade Deal. It looks like Remain voters are having second thoughts about their support for the EU. Even 20%+ LibDem voters are strongly in favour of the UK:OZ Deal.

        It will be interesting to see the advance polling from Batley & Spen by-election. The BBC are suspiciously quiet on that.

           3 likes

  36. Jack in the Green says:

    Good to see the BBC giving airtime to Blair. His vaccination edicts owe everything to Hitler and Stalin. You are pure evil mate.

       19 likes

  37. Dobyns says:

    So, Saint Marcus of Rashford scored a goal.

    Wondering why his celebration didn’t include taking a knee and a free school lunch …

       20 likes

  38. BRISSLES says:

    Apropos Gareth Southgate’s stand on taking (somewhere) the knee.

    Reading in today’s paper, it sounds to me like he blackmailed his team in to doing so.

    Quote: The decision was taken after a team meeting and those who object should look at themselves. They should put themselves in the shoes of a young England player about to represent his country. If it was their children out there, how would they feel ?

    Well, that sounds pretty clear to me – and if they object to doing this gesture will Southgate hold it against them when picking future teams ? And if that isn’t a bullying attitude then I don’t know what is.

       29 likes

    • vonrecht says:

      BRISSLES – Agreed! You do wonder WHY they continue to do this? Is it related to the death of some American criminal type, years ago? Which is relevant to us because..? Is it some sort of gesture of voluntary subjugation, if so, to WHOM? Is it a mindless ritual which has replaced a prayer to the Creator? Is it a deliberately offensive secular act , hiding behind what has always been a spiritual one in the past?
      If we human beings are LOST, there is no better proof of this than this brainless ‘taking the knee’ on the sports field. I used to go to Church, and would have been happy to ‘take the knee’ BEFORE GOD, if required. I don’t recall that I ever was, for -even there- it might have seemed a little excessive! And I don’t recall this act of worship applying to ANY human being, other than Christ, and -even then- it was a largely PRIVATE one. Acceptable because Christ WAS God.
      One does feel that none of these kneeling morons has the slightest respect for the SACRED. Long as you get to kick the ball… In my eyes it is therefore -at best- an act of abuse.

         9 likes

  39. Fedup2 says:

    The American actress married to an ex prince has given birth to a girl – named Oprah- Chanel

    At least it won’t be a British citizen – will it ?…

       10 likes

  40. Jack in the Green says:

    Blimey, Brandon has changed a bit. Rest assured no BBC apparatchiks know the first thing about Suffolk apart from a big brexit majority. Yeah, thanks for destroying Lowestoft with your fishing policy EU. I wasn’t born here but Suffolk people are a decent bunch and deserve better than to be treated with contempt by the usual suspects.

       15 likes

  41. Ian Rushlow says:

    Serena Williams has been knocked out of the French Open 2021. Must be because of institutional racism, right?

    Warning: contains graphic illustrations.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/57377992

       18 likes

  42. TrickCyclist says:

    BBC News channel on Harry & Markle’s new baby.
    L.A. correspondent David Willis told us that the mite has been named “Lilibeth” after the nickname given to the Queen “by her father, King George V.”
    His mistakes, not mine.
    The quality of reporting we have come to expect from the BBC!

       11 likes

  43. Peter Sausages says:

    The Bafta’s are very Black Tonight

       9 likes

  44. StewGreen says:

    What’s the topic for this weeks Day Of Hate by the Labour Twitter army, that they do every Sunday ?
    It’s the Daily Mail article about Jawad Iqbal’s book exposing Britain’s extremist mosques, which the Mail span as
    \\British towns that are no-go areas for white people
    : Muslim author’s study of mosques reveals children ‘attacked for being white’
    //

    Being keen to demolish the entire book Labour activists have picked up on that over-over hyperbolic crazy claim by the mail.
    Of course no entire town is a No-go area

    I post the GBNews presenter’s positive tweet
    One thing is, the Labour Army are afraid to post a link to the Daily Mail

       14 likes

    • Scroblene says:

      That’s so sad.

      To have to leave the home you’ve lived in for your whole life, and is now a place where foreigners claim their space.

      I despise the policies that our succesive governments have let loose, purely to get votes and money for themselves.

         17 likes

  45. Non Snowflake says:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/57379184

    England cricketer Ollie Robinson has been banned for 2 weeks for exercising freedom of speech and not actually hurting anybody (around 10 years ago)

    If I were the talented young man I’d just give two fingers to the authorities and tell them to f off and simply refuse to play for England again.

       13 likes

  46. Fedup2 says:

    New thread up . Thank you .

       0 likes

  47. Foscari says:

    Black lives matter, black lives matter, black lives matter.
    Unless you were partying with Sasha Johnson where
    not one of you has come forward to help the police !
    This BLM activist was gunned down by one of her own “brothers”
    and day after day on the BBC we see and hear the
    apologists for this anarchist organization. We hear the
    England football manager Gareth Southgate singing the
    praises of these anarchist Marxists and he and his team
    cant wait to go into subjugation for them.
    Charity begins at home black citizens. For me and millions
    upon millions of indigenous folk in the UK , black lives
    matter as much as any others. Perhaps it would be a good
    idea if more of the black gangs thought about this more
    than slaughtering their brothers ,or anybody else that gets
    in their way. And for the BBC and Gareth Southgate and the
    England football team , wake up, you duped idiots.

       2 likes