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Noted on Sparrow Chat’s sidebar this morning:

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Filed under: Stunned

Hear we go again. The BBC has fired presenter Carol Thatcher for referring to a tennis player as a ‘golliwog’.

Apparently, the remark was made ‘off-air’, but other presenters took exception and reported her for the comment.

I guess the first lesson is: make sure you know who your friends are.

So far as I’m concerned the Thatcher family are all a bunch of ignorant snobs (Carol is the daughter of Margaret, once prime minister of the UK) but I’m not sure this isn’t carrying political correctness to extremes.

Is it more likely, perhaps, the other presenters found Ms Thatcher intolerable, and seized the opportunity to drop her in it?

The Associated Press explains, in its article on the subject, that:

The word “golliwog,” referring to a black doll-like character, was once widely used including as the emblem of a leading make of British jam, but in recent decades has been dropped after claims it was racist.”^[1]

I fondly remember, as a small child, the cuddly toy golliwog I carried with me everywhere. I loved it. I also avidly collected all the Robertson’s jam golliwogs, and was the first in our street to have a full set.

I guess that stamps me as a racist. Now, I’ll never work for the BBC.

As a postscript, one of Britain’s most distinguished peers and politicians, Lord Tebbit, commented:

It does seem very odd that Jonathan Ross^[2] can be back broadcasting having made obscene, insulting remarks on the air, and Carol Thatcher, who said something which is allegedly highly offensive but which I rather doubt was meant to be so, in private, should be banned in this way.

“It is probably a bit of a way for the BBC to get back at Carol’s mother.”^[3]

Which adds absolutely nothing to the narrative, but does serve to demonstrate the standard of British nobility sitting in the Upper House of the British Parliament.

^{[1] “BBC drops Carol Thatcher over ‘golliwog’ remark” AFP, February 3rd 2009}

^{[2] “Russell Brand resigns from BBC as Jonathan Ross apologises for ‘juvenile remarks'” Guardian, October 29th 2008}

^{[3] “Golliwog remark gets Carol in a jam” ITV, February 4th 2009}

Filed under: Carol Thatcher’s mouth

There are times the British are a pain in the ass. Despite being one of them, I often find it difficult to tolerate their bleaty attitude whenever they’re slightly inconvenienced.

Take the recent heavy snow falls in southern England as an example. All we hear on the BBC News are commuters complaining – “there’s not enough snow ploughs”; “the roads aren’t salted enough”; “the trains don’t run on time”; “the planes are grounded”, and, from one woman: – “I’ve just come back from America and they cope wonderfully with this type of weather. Why can’t we be like them?”

Yes, my dear, that’s because in most of America it’s an annual event lasting from December till April. If they weren’t geared up to cope with heavy snowfalls the whole nation might as well do what grounghogs do best – hibernate for the winter.

London was paralyzed this week by ten inches of snow and more on the way.^[1] The last time they experienced such a storm was eighteen years ago. Londoners are sliding around on their backsides blaming everyone else for the icy conditions: the government, the local authorities, even the Mayor of London.

Now, I’ve been known to criticize Mayor Boris Johnson. I’ve even called him a total buffoon with about as much intelligence as a lobotomized earthworm, but just this once I had to agree with him when he stated that it made no sense to purchase loads of expensive snow ploughing equipment, only to have it rusting in a yard for eighteen years waiting for the next big “snow event”.

A number of top British whiners even complained they were the embarrassment of Europe, because the buses had to stop running.

“They never stopped runnin’ in the war. They wus runnin’ right through the blitz!” cried one old goat, as though the Luftwaffe had been some meteorological disturbance whipped up by the BBC weather service.

Someone should have pointed out that, if Hitler had sent as many bombs in 1940 as the weather provided snowflakes in 2009, there would have been no London for the buses to run in.

As for Brits being the laughing stock of Europe, that’s been the case since 1992, when the rest of the E.U. switched to the euro, while Britain clung dogmatically to its dodgy pound as it dropped in value against the European currency………and dropped, and dropped, and dropped…..

……like snowflakes on London.

^{[1] “Heavy snow disrupts London travel” BBC, February 2nd 2009}

Filed under: British weather