11 October (Part 1) - The Wokerati speaks
My few days away from the computer was due to preparing the ground for yesterday’s big event.
Providing a couple of new circuits on my electrical consumer unit, or fuse box as it used to be called.
I had called in an electrician but on arrival a couple of weeks ago he refused to tell me how he planned to do
the job without disrupting the surrounding area too much and eventually got around to telling me that I was “just a silly old man”
(who presumably knows nothing) so I told him none too politely he could leave immediately;
which he did. His apprentice or whatever he was quietly told me he was “seriously
embarrassed” and seen his sparky boss behave in that way before.
After
checking the regulations (who knew that cable clips like these are considered to
be a fire risk?) and buying some specialist tools I did the job myself
yesterday. The mechanical rearrangements took far longer than the cable connections
but by mid-afternoon the job was done and power restored.
On my return to the internet I soon noticed that the name John Davey was close to trending on Twitter. What had Dear John done?
A jokey comment too far it would seem and Labour Members, their teenage activists and Sidcup’s Champagne Socialist
had been wound up into a frenzy while I had been more concerned with terminating 2·5mm cables. Where were they when Councillor Craske went far
beyond John Davey’s ill-considered Tweeting and the police arrested him after
tracing internet obscenities to his IP address? Craske was not sanctioned in any
way by the Leader and is her longest serving Cabinet Member.
Councillor Davey is now on the receiving end of official complaints to anyone who might be prepared to listen.
John Davey,
like me, is just a little disappointed that Nazainin Zaghari-Ratcliffe became a
political activist almost immediately after being released from her unjustifiable
imprisonment by the murderous Iranian regime of mad Mullahs.
I was always very sympathetic towards Nazanin and her family and followed her various Twitter accounts. There was even a
supportive blog last year
and understanding when on her release she was immediately critical of Boris Johnson’s (as
Foreign Secretary) idiocy. He said that she was not just a British citizen
who had innocently gone to visit her mother. Just what one needs when
languishing in a rat infested cell.
The political situation was admittedly difficult. Iran had paid £400 million for British
armaments and then a change of regime caused trade sanctions to be imposed.
Someone in Whitehall decided that Iran could not get their money back and the criminals in Tehran took their horrible revenge.
It is impossible to imagine how confinement in some dank hell hole will affect
any personality and if bitterness towards feeble minded politicians is a consequence
fair minded people should accept it even if they think a better course might be
to make up for lost time with family and young daughter.
But political activism is Nazanin’s chosen course. As people of my age used to
say “it's a free country” so who can object to that? I suspect that Councillor
John Davey would agree with almost every word written above but his Twitter
comment is less than sympathetic to the trauma which Boris Johnson helped to
bring about. Where was the joke emoji?
As
misjudgments go it is a pretty big one and the Wokerati has spoken. One might
ask how many years has John served Bedonwell school without them ever noticing that
he is whatever they now think he is?
At least ten years to my knowledge.
It is the knee-jerk reaction of the previously unobservant.
Maybe it is John who is “the silly old man” and not me but he has at least
flushed the hypocritical and spiteful out of the woodwork. The Chairman of the
Erith and Thamesmead Conservative Association, the unelected Aaron Newbury, has
suspended Councillor Davey’s party membership. Davey was Chairman for the past
ten years so once again we have people who never noticed that he is whatever he
is supposed to be when it suited them.
Note: It will be interesting to see how many more
Guardian reading trolls I will have driven into a messaging frenzy.