Warning: Huge Squirrel Ahead!

 

What a difference a year makes! A year ago the government decided to lock down our country because of covid. At that time we were all ignorant about that virus but the various images crowding the MSM, from TV programmes to frontpages, were sufficiently scary. 

However, to displace the necessary debate about how this government drifted from one that is accountable to us, through our elected representatives, to one where we’re governed by unaccountable SAGEs, a giant squirrel has been produced. Yes, some papers have got their ‘health’ reporters and editors trying to produce an ‘analysis’. Here’s one quote which ought to have set the ball rolling:

“The Telegraph has learnt that the pivotal moment in imposing lockdown came on March 14 last year – nine days before lockdown started – when Mr Johnson was shown evidence that ministers and scientific advisers had badly miscalculated how quickly the NHS would be overwhelmed. The Prime Minister was “stunned” to be told by a Number 10 data analyst at a hurriedly-convened Saturday meeting that his “squash the sombrero” policy was not working and that hospitals were as little as three weeks away from being past capacity.” (paywalled link)

Instead of finding out who this ‘No 10 data analyst’ actually was, instead of asking, even in retrospect, why no time was given to see if ‘squash the sombrero’ would actually work, instead of opening a critical debate we’ve got the wall-to-wall cry: ‘look – a squirrel’! It’s the ongoing ‘outrage’ about the Clapham Common vigil and about violence against women. Again, data are bandied about – and again, just as with lockdown, it’s actually about behavioural change. “Men” must change, policing must change, but one entity doesn’t ever have to change: ‘our MSM’. 

I’ll mention in passing that we’re again witnessing mawkish virtue-signalling according to which everything must be allowed, even the breaking of covid rules, because victimhood trumps all. This time, half the population is a victim, making the other half the perpetrator – aided and abetted by opinion writers in the MSM who are driving the debate. The comment piece in the DT, by the ‘police, fire and crime commissioner for North Yorkshire, Ms Julia Mulligan’, under the headlines “Police have a duty to victims to admit they got it wrong at the Sarah Everard vigil” (paywalled link) shows nicely how this narrative is going to be framed: ‘victims’ are in the right and non-victims must apologise.

Note well that it’s the ‘online narrative’ which counts, as the subtitle makes painfully obvious: “Forces believe they have made strides in giving women more confidence to report crimes, but the narrative online has differed this week”. For ‘online narrative’ read ‘hashtagged outrage on twitter’. What chance do facts have when ‘victims’ feelings’ are deemed to matter more! There’s one other paragraph which demonstrates the woolly thinking involved in framing that narrative. Ms Mulligan writes:

“Early on Sunday morning, my eldest teenage daughter confronted me in the kitchen, aghast. “Mum, how can the police expect women to go to them for help, when they arrest us for making a speech? And why are men allowed to get away with it when we are not?” Social media was awash with pictures of the police standing by and allowing Rangers fans to celebrate their victory over St Mirren with impunity. The fact that Police Scotland made 28 arrests that night was nowhere to be seen.” (paywalled link)

Indeed it wasn’t – and whose fault is that? I wonder if that Police etc Commissioner pointed out to her daughter that men didn’t ‘get away’ with it but that the MSM didn’t mention those arrests. Why didn’t they? Was it because this was only about a male football crowd? Was perhaps the “females are victims” narrative already being framed? How come we’re handing the narrative-framing power to the unaccountable MSM? Who actually gave them the power to do so? A factual statement like this one, smuggled in between ‘outrage’ paragraphs:

“The vigil on Clapham Common was initially peaceful. Police officers moved in to disperse crowds after dark and arrested three women, two of them teenagers, and one man.” (link, paywalled)

is clearly inadequate to ‘frame the narrative’ of ‘all females are victims’! It seems that the various chief editors are thoroughly scared of not screaming the latest hashtag outrage from their front pages. Instead of reporting calmly on what actually happened they’ll do anything to fuel the manufactured flames of female outrage: social media mobs rule ok!

In support of yon narrative we’re presented with more statements- this next one is actually naming names and isn’t just quoting ‘a source’. Health warning: put down your mug or glass before reading and don’t splutter over your screen and keyboard:

“Nimco Ali, who is advising the government on tackling violence against women and girls, compared the Met’s behaviour to that of an abuser. She told Times Radio: “It does come from a handbook of abusive men, where . . . you’re constantly blaming the victim for your act of violence.” (link, paywalled)

Ms Nimco Ali is a ‘friend of Carrie’, according to a quote I published yesterday (here). As for her painting the police and by implication all men as using this fictional ‘handbook of abusive men’ – oh dear! Shouldn’t Ms Ali have asked instead how come the Met Chief, Ms Dick, allowed such alleged ‘culture’ from this alleged ‘handbook’ to prevail in her police force? 

The funny thing though is that, by blaming the police, by saying  that nothing would have happened had they not been there, those commentators don’t seem to notice that it’s now the police officers who’ve become the victims when they use the mantra that ‘the police made us do it’ … Anyway, they’ll use  this excuse when defending any acts of violence and vandalism being perpetrated by ‘activists’ in future demos or ‘vigils’.

Meanwhile there’s an opinion piece in The Times where the author is lovingly adding details to this narrative’s frame. Under the headline “The Met’s dumb mistakes at Clapham Common turned Sarah Everard’s vigil into a protest” Ms Turner contrasts the dumb, male police ‘brutes’ with the soft, gentle, female protestors who ‘will have experienced a ‘feminist awakening’ – yes, she really wrote that! Are we now getting the ‘feminist woke’ version? This next sentence made me again bounce off the walls in fury: 

“A male anti-lockdown campaigner who tried to mansplain to the crowd was shut down with cries of “not your place!” (link, paywalled)

Indeed – how dare he! Let no outraged female allow a mere man to speak! He’s only ‘mansplaining’ and no woman needs to listen to that! Does Ms Turner, do all those writers and hashtag exploiters not see where this is going? Do they not understand that denying someone his freedom of speech because of his gender is profoundly disturbing? It doesn’t matter that this bloke was not exactly tactful for having gone to this all-female demo: does he not have the right to do so? Would they have dared to say this if that man had been of a darker complexion? 

Meanwhile, we’re going to be treated to an ‘investigation’, and ‘lessons will be learned’. We can be certain of that because certain male opinion writers are already signalling their surrender. Mr Timothy in the DT has written a long comment piece about how “we” must deal properly with male violence, incarcerating them and so forth (paywalled link). The point he overlooks – the point which all those outraged female writers and hashtag followers don’t mention – is that the same crowd, now so outraged, has been campaigning for years, if not decades, for lenient prison sentences.

It’s the left who has installed this culture of being kind to offenders in our criminal justice system. Calling for hard prison sentences, asking that ‘for life’ actually does mean ‘for life’ and not a release after some years, has been deemed to be unacceptably ‘extreme right wing’ for decades. I’m not going to mention that a certain group of criminals wasn’t prosecuted because of ‘community cohesion’. I’ll also not mention that there is a certain ‘handbook’ which does not just condone but prescribes violence against women: elephants in the corner mustn’t be mentioned. 

The final twist to this sorry tale is that, on the back of this ‘outrage’, Labour will now not vote for giving the police more powers, for example in regulating demos (link, paywalled and paywalled link). Savour this remark by Mr Lammy (Lab):

“David Lammy, the shadow justice secretary, said that the killing of Sarah Everardhad “instigated a national demand for action to tackle violence against women”, making it “no time to be rushing through poorly thought-out measures to impose disproportionate controls on free expression”. (link, paywalled)

Don’t make the mistake of taking ‘free expression’ as meaning ‘Freedom of Speech’! Lammy means that demos must be allowed to go on, from BLM to green stuff, and never mind if those demonstrators commit acts of vandalism or violence against the police! At the same time, people mustn’t be allowed to have their say, they can be ‘cancelled’ – especially if they’re male. Do they not see that, outrage about violence against women notwithstanding, they are creating a society divided by gender where violence against males by males isn’t noteworthy because they’re ‘only men’?

Is this the future of our society, that Justitia must no longer be blind to colour or gender but mete out justice according to the latest hashtag mob? Are we no longer going to be equal before the Law? Is that the ‘lesson’ we must now learn?

 

KBO!

 

 

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