The Diary of a Country Bumpkin

Initially I thought, fair enough he was caught red handed as they say but then when I thought more about it I have two trains of thought on the matter.

My first thought is that he must have known where the camera was situated in his office and he would have to be a complete fool to be snogging his affair in plain sight of the camera.

Then again, perhaps it wasn’t an integral House of Commons camera and someone must have placed a camera in his office knowing they would catch him out.

If this is the case one has to ask who was it that placed the camera, I feel there is more to this story than is commonly known, we shall see perhaps!

It seems the latest thing for school teachers is to teach children how to protest about climate change and I am wondering if this is regardless of the parents views on the matter and personally if I had any children at school I would certainly not want them taught how to do such a thing.

What gives school teachers the right to assume that parents would want their precious offspring taught about climate change, unless of course they are going to teach the subject from the very beginning of the creation of the Earth from molten hot lump of rock through the ice age and the many changes right up to the current day.

One wouldn’t want children to be indoctrinated with woke left wing ideas on the subject where they are taught to believe that we are going to be able to save the Earth by building millions of electric cars, together with the necessary infrastructure of charging points and wind and solar panels to charge all these millions of cars without using any energy.

The production of all these items uses massive amounts of energy all of which contributes to climate change and one hopes this will be included in the teaching when educating the next generation of young people.

My how things have changed, for when I was at school had I taken a day off to protest about climate change it would have been considered truanting and I would have been punished accordingly, now it seems this sort of behaviour is to be encouraged, how very strange.

I received the following email concerning this post which I wrote some considerable time ago, having found the original story in an online newspaper article.

My name appears in an article you have published without my consent. Please see below.

I request that you please immediately and urgently unpublish this for a number of reasons as it invades my privacy because you have used my name.

I can confirm that this article is inaccurate.

I can confirm there is no legal basis for you to write this content and use my name.

The HMCTS has breached by Human Rights under Article 8 (Right to Privacy). There is no legal basis for this content to be reported.

In addition, the Principles of GDPR 5 and 6 has been breached in relation to how my personal data has been handled.

Under GDPR, I have the right to erasure. This article is not relevant and is in an intrusion of my privacy.

There are no legal documents or court judgments on the official HM Courts & Tribunal (HMCTS) website because the court made an error and so this was removed some considerable time ago by the Court itself.

Please immediately remove this URL prior to escalation to the ICO for invasion of privacy. 

Thank you.

__________________________________

Having considered the matter, I have decided to remove any mention of the person’s name or the firm she was working for, as her main complaint appears to be the using of her name and the fact that the article is inaccurate, although I am unsure as to whether inaccurate is the same thing as untrue.

I shall therefore consider the story as a work of fiction and I would ask you, dear reader to do the same and read this fictional tale as one which may or may not reflect some of the rather peculiar stories that one might read in the newspapers in this day and age.

TEACHING YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO SUCK EGGS.

Here’s another story from the world of loony stories which seem to be coming up with ever increasing regularity, this time a woman sues her employer over the use of the phrase “teaching grandma to suck eggs” as she alleges the phrase is sexist.

An unnamed lady is suing her employer for sex discrimination as she claims the use of the phrase “teaching grandma to suck eggs” is sexist and is also suing for unfair dismissal and victimisation, although her employer insists she was fired because she failed her probation period and was poor at her job.

The employer claims that the £XX,000-a-year (job deleted), from (city deleted), was dismissed in late 20xx because she was poor at her job but the unnamed lady, is now taking claims of sex discrimination, unfair dismissal and victimisation to an employment tribunal.

Employment Judge (name deleted) said, the lawyer for (the unnamed employee) suggests that comments such as “telling a grandma how to suck eggs” is harassment because of her sex, however council for the employer suggests that it is a generic, colloquial turn of phrase not derogatory of women but refers to teaching someone something they already know, which is not harassment on the grounds of sex.

The unnamed employee also told the tribunal that the decision to terminate her employment was an act of victimisation after she had raised concerns of bullying and harassment, although the employer rejected the claims and suggested that the real reason was that she performed poorly and failed probation.

A tribunal report added that the employer had raised concerns in relation to the employee’s timekeeping and execution of her work which led to the termination of her employment and had raised concerns over her performance in a previous performance review.

The employer had raised concerns in relation to the employee’s timekeeping and execution of her work, matters which were relevant to the issues that led to the termination of her employment.

Judge (name deleted) ruled that the allegation should be heard at a full hearing which will take place at a later date.

Now, in this fictional story, I have no idea about her timekeeping or lack of ability at the job but I do know that to suggest the expression “you can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs” is sexist seems ridiculous to me as I have used the phrase myself on numerous occasions when referring to both men and women and have always thought of the phrase as a compliment to the grandmother as she already knows only too well how to do whatever you are trying to teach her and in fact, the grandmother should be the one teaching you.

This is a very easy one, if you leave your place of employment you forego any perks of the job and have to give back the company car etc and Archie’s father has chosen to leave the well known firm called the Royal Family.

If you are not ordained as a Vicar you do not have the right to use the title of Vicar, or if you are not in the Police force and chose to impersonate the Chief Constable you can be arrested, God forbid that someone who is not a qualified brain surgeon should be allowed to poke around willy-nilly in some poor unsuspecting soul’s head, you cannot have the title if you are not qualified for the job.

Unfortunately Archie’s father has chosen to leave the Royal Family and distance himself and his family from them and to live in America allegedly because of the pressure of being a member of the Royal Family and the detrimental effect it has had on his mental health.

It seems to me that you can’t have it both ways, you are either in or out, if you want your son to have the title of Prince then you have to return to Great Britain and take up where you left off as a working Royal.

Harry has chosen to leave the job, so with that decision he now has to give up the company car and any perks of the job which he or members of his family may have been entitled to like any other employee, he has made his bed, now he has to lay in it.

Very briefly the UK last year gave 14.5 billion away in foreign aid and I believe this year they are giving 71 million to China and 100 million to India.

That’s 71 million to China, a country with an economy 5 times that of the UK and its own space programme to send men to their own space station.

Also 100 million to India who also has its own space programme to send a rocket to Venus.

I don’t think the UK has its own space programme but I’m just wondering if we saved the 171 million we gave to China and India it would be a start towards having one, or we could use that money to help the poor and needy in this country, just a thought.

There has been a bit of fuss recently about footballers moving the products of sponsors out of frame when they are giving interviews.

As my knowledge of football is virtually non existent you may not be too surprised to find this is going to be one of my shorter posts.

I have just started and am now on the point of summing up, so here we go!

If I’m not much mistaken footballers are paid vast sums of money which enables them to buy very classy motorcars and have them made to their specification and generally blinged up to the point where they have removed any aspect of class from the vehicle and this for kicking a ball around a football pitch.

Now the money to pay these young men has to come from somewhere and one of these places is from sponsors who place their logo on the players shirts etc and place products in front of the players when giving interviews.

For some reason some of these players have taken offence at certain of these products and removed them from the view of the cameras although Lord only knows why and it seems this may not have been the brightest thing to do.

I believe millions was lost from the share price of one of the fizzy drink companies after one of the players removed it from sight, which proves the players may have great skills in placing the football in the right place in front of the goal but lack the necessary intelligence to appreciate the placing of the sponsors product is what pays their wages.

A recent survey which asked people to listen to over one hundred different accents reading from the same script has found that Essex and London accents are deemed less intelligent.

The study surveyed attitudes among young adults aged 18 to 32 towards accents across the south east of England where about 200 listeners from a variety of backgrounds were played 10-second clips of speakers reading the same script from across the region, including Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Surrey, various parts of London and, of course, Essex.

People from Essex and London were judged to be less intelligent than people from other areas together with people who are working class from across all of south east England, who were judged to be less intelligent, friendly and trustworthy than middle class people, while people from an ethnic minority were judged less intelligent than white people based only on their accent.

I have to wonder how the participants could tell the difference between a working class and a middle class accent when they were not familiar with the sound of that Counties accent, is it just a case of dropping H’s etc, can you just tell from just listening?

This seems a very strange survey to me and I’m wondering what constituted an Essex accent or a London accent, for whilst there is a clearly defined Essex Cockney style accent, it is completely different from an Essex rural accent and there is no such thing as a London accent as London is so multicultural and the traditional London accent of the real Cockney’s has all but disappeared.

It seems to me that the most prevalent accent in London now is what is called the Multicultural London accent, where the voice is projected from the front of the mouth and emphasises any word ending in “ility” and is a dreadful sound.

I used to have a wonderful public school accent which I toned down when I moved to Essex and everyone said, “you ain’t harf posh,” leaving me now with a strange middle class accent with an Essex twang, if only I hadn’t been swayed by peer pressure.

Assuming the London accent they are referring to is the London Multicultural accent which has become quite prevalent on television for voice overs and advertisements perhaps we will be hearing less of this accent in the future if the advertisers think it sounds less intelligent and I for one will be delighted about that.

How very sad and probably true that the comedy series Ab Fab would probably not get commissioned today as the current woke culture would forbid it says the star and writer of the show, Jennifer Saunders.

It seems a shame that a small percentage of the population are now dictating what can and can’t be seen on television, we live in an age when one complaint can take a programme off air even though millions who watched the same show chose not to complain.

Apparently the German episode of Fawly Towers was stopped from transmission, not one might think because of Basils constant mentions of the war and goose-stepping round the room but because the character of the Major uses language which can be termed racist when describing a visit to a cricket test match between India and Great Britain.

In his anecdote, the Major tells Basil Fawlty that he went to the test with a woman who “kept referring to the Indians as niggers. ‘No, no, no,’ I said, ‘the niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs.'”

The problem here is when John Cleese and Connie Booth wrote the character of Major Gowen, they were clearly not being unthinkingly racist, they were satirising an English upper-class bigot. The joke depends on the audience first thinking that, when the Major rebukes his companion “No, no, no”, he is condemning her for inflammatory language, when it turns out that he is just as bad as she is.

It works as a joke because it shows the Major up as a behind the times racist and the Major is the butt of the joke but it can’t be shown as it is considered politically incorrect today, even though the joke is actually pointing out you can’t use language like that nowadays which is a very woke point of view, which is the strange irony of the situation.

Perhaps the only way to tell this joke nowadays is a scene where two writers are trying to write the same joke taking the mickey out of the racist Major but are unable to find the politically correct words to fill the gaps.

I can see why Jennifer Saunders says Ab Fab would not have been commissioned and I have sympathy for any comedian looking for subjects for his or her next comedy routine as the choice of subjects is getting limited all the time.

Luckily we have very talented new comics like Mickey Flanagan who can produce hilarious politically correct jokes about peeping out from behind closed curtains and are you going out, or are you going out out!

When we first heard of Shamima it was the story of a 15 year old school girl going missing and then as the story unfolded it became the story of a very foolish girl and her two friends going to join ISIS to become a Jihadi bride.

During her time away she had three children all of whom have died, she married a Jihadi fighter and became involved in some pretty beastly goings on out in Syria, I seem to remember her talking of watching the beheadings and seeing the heads fall into a bucket.

Finally she turned up some years later and lacking her two friends who had been killed and asking to be able to return to the UK and my initial reaction was to say firmly, no for you have made your bed and now you have to lay in it.

However, some time has now passed and I am changing my mind, as I now believe she was groomed before she went and once there I imagine it was very hard to turn back.

What will happen if she is not allowed back, will she become radicalised again and the next time she turns up on British soil she is wearing a suicide vest, or if she is brought home to stand trial and is sent to prison will the same thing happen, viewed like that it’s a bit of a catch 22 situation.

So we either believe her and she is genuinely remorseful and take pity on a someone who as a young naïve school girl was groomed or an even more strange angle that she is extremely clever and is trying to pull the wool over our eyes and is just pretending to have regrets about her actions.

My initial reaction was to say, let her rot in hell but I have changed my mind and I think we should give her the benefit of the doubt, bring her home and after she is tried in a court of law and if found guilty be given a fairly long prison sentence, obviously making sure she is kept well away from any chance of being radicalised when in prison.

Assuming she was a naïve schoolgirl who was groomed what a sad story this is.

An inquest has decided that the convicted terrorist Usman Khan was legally killed, now I don’t know about you but I’m wondering why they had to have an inquest at vast expense no doubt to find something I could have told you for nothing.

Khan had been released from prison 11 months before the killings and was said to have been mixing with high-profile terrorists when inside, however he was automatically released on licence with the Parole Board having no say as to whether he was safe to release.

After he was released he was assessed as being more dangerous than when he went in and he was seen as an imminent danger of him causing serious harm to the public.

Usman Khan went to a meeting at the Fishmongers Hall for a prisoner rehabilitation conference and whilst there taped two large knives to his hands and started to attack people at the meeting resulting in many injured and the death of Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones.

He fled the building and was chased on to London Bridge by three brave men who were attempting to detain him until the Police arrived even though he was wearing a suicide vest which turned out later to be a fake.

When the first team of Police from City of London police arrived they tried to take control of Khan but he told one of them that he had a bomb which left the Police no option but to shoot him dead.

Now to sum up in layman’s terms, a terrorist nutter known to be dangerous tapes two large knives to his hands and runs amok in a meeting hall, injuring many and killing two innocent people, the Police arrive and see he is wearing a suicide vest and shoot him dead before he has time to detonate the bomb.

There are two things I find quite extraordinary about this story, firstly he was released from prison when it was known that he was more dangerous than when he went in and secondly why they needed to waste money having an inquiry into whether he was legally killed.

I have to say that I think shooting him to death before he blows everyone to pieces seems an eminently sensible course of action under the circumstances.