Friday 6th January

And the row goes on and on; now Diane Abbott has come unstuck in the twitter-sphere, by being careless in the use of her language.  I am not sure of the exact words she used, as is so often the case nowadays the facts become obscured by the row they cause.  In essence she was saying that white people love to, or in the past have loved to ‘divide and rule’.  Nothing so awful I would have thought in that, except the term ‘white people’.  But, in fact, it was true.  It was almost official British Colonial policy, especially in India and Africa, where local rivalries were ‘encouraged’ so as to stop the ‘natives’ from uniting against the minority but ruling ‘whites’.  It is a historical fact, and one which maybe rightly the great great grandchildren now living as a minority in this country resent.  But actually this row looks as if it has been media generated; maybe in some sort of retaliation against Ms. Abbott, who they have never forgiven for being black, intelligent and a woman, so if she slips up and appears to make a racist remark herself – then the heavens descend.

What sort of a pass have we come to though, when football players, and commentators come to that, are publicly lambasted for allegedly offensive remarks.  And the popular definition of something that is offensive is now not whether the offender meant to offend but whether the offendee felt offended by the words used.  Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Where on earth will this end, because I feel offended that this is the situation,  when people cannot say what they think.  It is hardly encouraging race hatred to say that one agrees or disagrees with a certain sentiment when it is expressed, but that is what it is coming to.  And language should liberate us, not tie us in knots.   Obviously one cannot go around recommending that certain groups of people or individuals should be persecuted (or worse) simply because of their race or nationality, but that simply isn’t the case here.  Poor Diane was maybe a tad sloppy in using the term ‘white people’, but hardly worth almost breaking the tea-cup for in this media storm.