Saturday, 7 February 2009

     Richard Littlejohn


 Isn't it time the Golliwog Squad finally grew up?

Last updated at 8:50 AM on 06th February 2009

Now that the Queen has been dragged into the Great Golliwog Controversy, the only remaining surprise is that the police haven't got involved. In the recent past, the constabulary has shown no such reticence in swooping on toy shops selling gollies and threatening to prosecute retailers for 'hate crime'. 

I half-expected the Sandringham souvenir shop to be declared a crime scene and the manager taken off in handcuffs by the Golliwog Squad. 

Buckingham Palace has been forced to issue a formal, grovelling apology and reiterate Her Maj's abhorrence of racism.

Row: Carol Thatcher's use of the word 'golliwog' ended with her dismissal from the BBC

Row: Carol Thatcher's use of the word 'golliwog' ended with her dismissal from the BBC

Meanwhile, Carol Thatcher remains at large, despite being given the elbow by the BBC's One Show, after referring to a mixed-race French tennis player, Jo Wilfried Tsonga, as a golliwog. 

But we still don't know is what, exactly, she said and in what context. 

Did she say 'That golliwog tennis player'? In which case it would have been deeply offensive and she'd deserve all the opprobrium she gets. 

Or perhaps she couldn't remember his name and said 'You know, the chap who looks like a golliwog'? Crass, certainly. But the context and tone of voice is crucial. 

 

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It has also been claimed that she said Tsonga was like a 'huggable golliwog', which, if true, puts a whole different complexion on the matter. That's the kind of thing a girl who grew up playing with gollies might say.

It's sweet, affectionate and in no way intended to be offensive, rather as if she had called someone a 'huggable teddy bear'. 

Frankly, I've no idea and neither does anyone else who wasn't there. In the only picture I've seen of Tsonga he doesn't look anything like a golliwog. Maybe she was talking about Andy Murray. 

Still, whatever the truth, Thatcher was daft to use the g-word in any context at the BBC.

The word itself is enough to spark foaming moral outrage among the Leftists and twenty-something producers who dominate the Corporation. Her mistake was to be so naive in thinking she could get away with it. A real racist would be careful to mind his words in such company. 

Her agent says the only other people present when she uttered the remark at a post-show party were the presenter Adrian Chiles and the comedienne Jo Brand. 

The controller of BBC1, Jay Hunt, says it was heard by a dozen people but, again, gives no context. She also denies it was a private conversation because it took place on BBC premises.

Hunt insists it would still be 'inappropriate' if Thatcher had said it in her own home, but adds graciously: 'It is not within my remit to control what she says at home.'

That's big of her. 

  

More from Richard Littlejohn...

 

But whether we like it or not, we don't live in a more innocent age and have to mind our language. Times change. Just because the Black And White Minstrel Show was popular 40 years ago, it doesn't mean the BBC would be justified in showing it today. 

I'm the same age as Carol Thatcher, though I've never met her, and grew up without any thought that the golly badges we collected from Robertson's Jam might be construed as 'racist'.

We'd never even heard the expression. To us, they were just dolls dressed as footballers, cricketers, or whatever, not an offensive representation of black people. 

It was only when the old Greater London Council fell to Ken Livingstone and the hard Left in the early Eighties - and started seeking out 'racism' where none existed or was intended - that the golly on the jar became an enemy of the people. 

What we used to call Left-wing lunacy is now the new orthodoxy, especially entrenched in public sector organisations such as the BBC, where they worship at the altar of 'diversity' and are in a constant state of zealous vigilance for any evidence of 'racism'. 

The younger members of the tribe simply don't know any different. They have been brainwashed to believe that 'racism' is the most heinous crime on earth, just as they know for a fact that Margaret Thatcher sent the Army in to pit villages to pitchfork bay-bees and burn down homes and factories. 

Some suspect that Carol Thatcher has been singled out because of the BBC's visceral hatred of her mother. Sounds about right. 

Adrian Chiles and Jo Brand have both been drawn into the 'golliwog' controversy

Adrian Chiles and Jo Brand have both been drawn into the 'golliwog' controversy

I know and like Adrian Chiles. He's a fine broadcaster and deserves his success. But I can't imagine he'd be too enamoured at having to work with the spawn of the Devil Incarnate. Nor would most of his production team. 

I like Jo Brand, too. There's something quaintly old-fashioned and gentle about her humour, for all her efforts to be 'edgy'. To be fair, she has never made any secret of her support for Labour and her hatred of Thatch. And this is where it gets interesting. 

Brand is currently the subject of a ridiculous police investigation into a joke she made on the BBC about the British National Party. Is the hounding of Carol Thatcher a way of evening up the score, since most people at the BBC see no difference between the Conservatives and the BNP? 

The police should have no more business investigating harmless jokes than confiscating harmless golliwogs from gift shops. 

It's all so arbitrary and there's no sense of proportion. For instance, the BBC can get away with impunity broadcasting jokes about the Queen's front bottom, but Sandringham selling golliwog souvenirs is considered to be a hanging offence. 
Isn't it time everyone grew up?

Jihadis checking into rehab? I say no, no, no!

One of the most disturbing developments over the past decade has been the rise of judicial activism, with judges increasingly deciding that they should make the laws, as well as uphold them.

They have no compunction, particularly in the arena of yuman rites and privacy, in riding roughshod over the democratic will of politicians and those who elected them.

David Miliband discussing the issues surrounding torture documents

David Miliband discussing the issues surrounding torture documents

Equally worrying is the tendency for politicians to act as if they are above the law. In the latest incident, ministers are refusing - under pressure from the U.S., it is alleged - to hand over to the High Court shared intelligence papers relating to the case of a man who claims to have been tortured at Camp Gitmo.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband says it is a matter of national security. For what it's worth, and for once, I agree with him. Actually, the case of Binyam Mohammed is deeply troubling - because he shouldn't be our problem. Although he lived here for six years, he's not a British citizen.

In 2001, he decided to move to Afghanistan. We are told, laughably, that this was to help him come to terms with his drug problem. Most people seeking rehab would check in to the Priory, not fly to the heroin capital of the world. I suppose it makes a change from going to a wedding or taking a computer course.

He was arrested a year later at Karachi airport, trying to board a plane to Britain on a forged passport and taken into custody, ending up at Gitmo on terrorism charges. Oh dear, how sad, never mind.

He's an Ethiopian, who was resident in Afghanistan and travelling through Pakistan when he was lifted. So why are British MPs and British lawyers talking about his 'release and return' to Britain?

It's not as if we haven't got enough home-grown jihadists of our own. The real scandal is that we are expending time and money even considering his case. It has no place in a British courtroom.

If Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Pakistan don't want him, he can stay at Guantanamo Bay - which, contrary to European jubilation, won't be closing any time soon - until he can find another country stupid enough to give him house room.

Holier-than-thou: Former PM Tony Blair is now flaunting his Christianity

Holier-than-thou: Former PM Tony Blair is now flaunting his Christianity

Now he does God

When Tony Blair was Prime Minister, he 'didn't do God'. Yesterday he turned up at the National Prayer Breakfast, in Washington, as warm-up man for President Barack Obama. 

Blair was introduced, with a straight face, as 'one of the great moral leaders on the planet'. 

He proceeded to give the kind of pious, nauseating speech which would have got him laughed out of London. 

Blair went into full Billy Graham mode, talking about 'courage' and 'humility' and the 'humbling of man's vanity before God'. 

I wonder what the relatives of all those who have died in the war Blair took us into on the basis of a blatant lie must have made of it. Morality? Blair doesn't know the meaning of the word. 

In the words of the late John Junor: pass the sick bag, Alice. 

Posted by Britannia Radio at 16:08