Sad but irrelevant.
Friday, June 17, 2016
People are understandably emotional in the aftermath of the murder of Jo Cox MP. Her husband's feelings right now are all too sadly familiar to me and I am sure all our thoughts are with him and his bereft children.
She was a political foe but her death diminishes us just the same. Nothing she sought to achieve by democratic means could ever justify any violence against her.
So much so obvious, one would have thought. And yet a shameful chorus of voices is trying to make her killer an emblem of Brexit. Even The Spectator has published a piece that despite some weasel words amounts to a smear on the Leave campaign.
People say in grief things they will later regret. The genuinely distraught must of course be cut some slack. No forgiveness should be extended however to wicked people trying to make political capital from murder.
It's good that the official Remain and Leave campaigns were suspended out of respect. Let's hope some civility can be achieved in the final days of this historic campaign. The nation's future still depends on getting this right. A murderer must not be allowed to shape our decision.
Thanks, you just made me spill my coffee!
Posted by: Tcheuchter | Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at 11:58 AM
If you pass 40 without becoming cynical you have really not been paying attention. So if your teacher was right you were just a child prodigy.
Posted by: Tom | Wednesday, June 22, 2016 at 09:18 AM
Thank you for your reply. I did not know of the home-made firearm and perhaps my ingrained cynicism was in the ascendant.
Housemaster to 17 year old me: In all my years of teaching I have never come across so cynical a boy.
It seems the only thing to have changed in 50 years is that I am no longer a boy.
Best wishes as always and thank heaven you're blogging again.
Posted by: Tcheuchter | Tuesday, June 21, 2016 at 07:02 PM
Whoah! That way madness lies. We are told he bought a manual on how to make a home made firearm years ago. He seems to have made one. I would rather die a fool than believe there could be such a wicked conspiracy as you fear in this country. I don’t think so badly of my political opponents. I also don’t believe them competent enough to keep such a dangerous secret.
Why should any non-violent democrat be embarrassed by an attempt to call this man’s views “far right" in order to create guilt by association? The Left in Britain have so successfully turned “right wing” into a term of abuse that perfectly sensible conservative views have been driven socially underground. They are now often expressed only in the secrecy of a polling booth. Hence the pollsters embarrassment at the last election.
Statist authoritarians driven by class hate like to think themselves morally superior to statist authoritarians driven by race hate. I despise them all, frankly. But I will never initiate force against them as a matter of political principle. My political opponents love the use of force. The offer no solution to any political problem that does NOT involve the use of force. But even they would usually only initiate it through the (in their eyes) sanitising agency of the state.
Posted by: Tom | Monday, June 20, 2016 at 02:08 PM
I hope you'll not think me a member of the tinfoil hat society, but a couple of questions have been nagging at me: 1) as Mair was known to be mentally unstable did someone get at him? 2) How did he come to be in possession of a firearm?
Posted by: Tcheuchter | Monday, June 20, 2016 at 12:30 PM
I am against force or fraud regardless of the target so I hope your observation is as unfair as it is rude. You are entitled to your opinion as to my motivation in writing what I did. I'm not going to speculate as to yours in making such a suggestion because I don't know you.
Posted by: Tom | Friday, June 17, 2016 at 07:27 PM
"A murderer must not be allowed to shape our decision"? How can you stop him doing so? You only say that because you know the way this particular murderer will shape the nation's decision. Markets up 1.2% today. No coincidence.
Posted by: Jackart | Friday, June 17, 2016 at 01:13 PM