Laurence Fox is an ignorant, spoilt brat.

[longwayoff]

What is wrong with this fool? Apparently in James Delingpole's podcast, heavy sigh, he criticises Sam Mendes for featuring a Sikh soldier in WW1 film. Ever heard of the British Empire, Laurence? How many Indians died for Britain? AIBU to say LF is being deliberately divisive and provocative and evidently doing his own publicity?

Most of history were taught growing up was about rich white men. Then we had social history about the struggles of poor white men. Very rare to hear about anybody else apart from those groups. Our history lessons were definitely from certain perspectives.

It's been great to see Dr Who tell different stories. Ada Lovelace, the partition in India, Rosa Parks.. All stories that sometimes are rarely taught.

Yet even that gets some people frothing at the mouth and ranting on twitter.

Even my disinterested teenage daughter (taught wokeness at school of course) piped up when I was watching QT and said the racism comment was correct. I like LT - don't agree with everything he says, think he's a terrible musician but great actor - but - it is refreshing to see someone speak out against ridiculous and pervasive identity politics. I also tend to think anyone who calls out "bigot" is entirely proving Fox's point. It is the woke that have lost their sense of humour..

Really? He was being funny? Oh.

To be fair, I was uneasy about the Rosa Parks storyline. I didn't like how they portrayed it as if she impulsively just had enough of racial segregation. Rosa wasn't impulsive. Her protest was carefully discussed, planned and organised beforehand, and her group picked Rosa to protest because there was nothing that any unsympathetic reporter could use to discredit her and because she didn't have any financial dependants. Because, obviously, a black man or woman who protested against segregation was going to lose their job.

I think it's important to recognise that black men and women standing up for the most basic tenets of equality had to consider the prospect of trial by media. Members of an oppressed group shouldn't have to be perfect to be granted their human rights, but they always do.

(Also, the latest episodes have been very badly written.)

You haven't read the Jarvis Dupont twitter exchange then? It was hilarious that some didn't even clock it was satire and went in to complete outrage mode

@chomalungma - totally agree.
I hadn't watched Dr Who for decades.
And it was like getting a history lesson and it was entertaining.
Of course it's not 100% accurate but it's good to get people watching this kind of thing.

This does make me very sad. Because the end result of this obsession with identity politics is that it will continue alienating those who jumped ship to vote Tory in the recent election. We'll end up with the Boris Johnson as PM for the next 10 years at least at this rate. This is a result of sticking to ideology rather than pragmatism.

I don't get the appeal of LF at all, but clearly there's been a groundswell of public support at the moment. You can continue with your hand wringing or you can think about how to turn this around.

Those of you getting into a bun fight over which regiment the Sikhs/non English fought in, is it important?

Surely the important thing is the fact that loads of soldiers of colour fought (and died) alongside the white soldiers against a common enemy. Twatty bloke is 'distracted' by this 😂 Diddums.

It would be good to see war films with more accurate representation imo. That genre in particular has traditionally been an all white main cast. More recently you see more black soldiers and even more recently Mexicans (in American films for example).

Yeah it's not fucking perfect but hopefully we're moving towards telling it how it was rather than the whitewashed version.

Interesting that another poster said children are taught about Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale together. Well I'm from the generation that had never heard of her until my own children started school and experienced Black History month! These things take time to become universally accepted and known.

I'm hoping it's career suicide for this idiot.

@brassbrass I hadn't heard of her either. Mind you, the convent school I went to was obsessed with the Tudors and Stuarts and very little else.

I did social and economic history at school. Very interesting but again the focus was mainly on white men, their inventions, hiw great they were in power, their struggles with regards to social rights. Little of other people. I am sure things are changing but there are still many untold stories out there.

There was a question on Only Connect in a similar vein about women who had been passed over for the Nobel prize for work they had done only for the prize to be given to MALE colleagues who came after or in one instance given to the male Phd student working under her!! Left me 😡

It's ridiculous to teach Mary Seacole as being of equal stature to Florence Nightingale, and a perfect example of identity politics skewing historical narrative. In a recent book for young children about inspiring women, FL was omitted, but MS was included.
MS ran a business in the Crimea, primarily for officers, using her herbal remedies. FL revolutionised the medical profession by using statistics, and applying them to nursing. Her work saved many lives. Her importance is immense.

In your opinion they are not of equal stature.

t's ridiculous to teach Mary Seacole as being of equal stature to Florence Nightingale

MS ran a business in the Crimea, primarily for officers, using her herbal remedies

You prompted me to read a bit about her. It sounds from Wiki that your description is pretty dismissive.

" In a dispatch written on 14 September 1855, William Howard Russell, special correspondent of The Times, wrote that she was a "warm and successful physician, who doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battlefield to aid the wounded and has earned many a poor fellow's blessing." Russell also wrote that she "redeemed the name of sutler", and another that she was "both a Miss Nightingale and a [chef]". Seacole made a point of wearing brightly coloured, and highly conspicuous, clothing—often bright blue, or yellow, with ribbons in contrasting colours.[90][91] While Lady Alicia Blackwood later recalled that Seacole had "... personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pa"

Also from Wiki

"However, historians maintain that claims that Seacole only served "tea and lemonade" do a disservice to the tradition of Jamaican "doctresses", such as Seacole's mother, Cubah Cornwallis and Sarah Adams, who used herbal remedies and hygienic practices in the late eighteenth century, long before Nightingale took up the mantle.

Social historian Jane Robinson argues in her book Mary Seacole: The Black Woman who invented Modern Nursing that Seacole was a huge success, and she became known and loved by everyone from the rank and file to the royal family.[104][105] Mark Bostridge points out that Seacole's experience far outstripped Nightingale's, and that the Jamaican's work comprised preparing medicines, diagnosis, and minor surgery"

Why is being black a facet of identity? Does a white person go around identifying themselves as white? Because I can assure you non white people don't go around thinking 'I'm black/brown' whatever - only when they are reminded of their colour and othered by bigots.

I guess the importance of Mary Seacole was that she volunteered to go and help but was rejected due to racism. Given what she was up against she travelled there independently and found a way to do it. If there was a successful business outcome as well then more power to her! So yes she is inspiring in her own way. Doesn't have to be all about Florence surely they can both be celebrated?

Another interesting thing from Wiki

By the 21st century, Seacole was much more prominent. Several buildings and entities, mainly connected with health care, were named after her.

In 2005, British politician Boris Johnson wrote of learning about Seacole from his daughter's school pageant and speculated: "I find myself facing the grim possibility that it was my own education that was blinkered."[147]

In 2007 Seacole was introduced into the National Curriculum, and her life story is taught at many primary schools in the UK alongside that of Florence Nightingale.

Mary Seacole was not rejected by Florence Nightingale. Or anyone.
She might have been useful at an individual level. But FL was groundbreaking in her work. MS was not.

In your opinion

No. Factually

Whitewashed facts?

!. FL was a great mathmatician. She used statistics to revolutionise nursing.
2, MS was a nurse
end of. no whitewashed facts.

At the start of the Crimean War in 1853, she went to London to offer her services. Her application to join Florence Nightingale’s nursing team was refused. Many nurses were turned down, whether because of their class background or, in this case, probably, ethnicity.

Not wishing to derail this thread into an argument about Mary. Safe to say we strongly disagree!

The difficulty here is that Seacole never applied for a nurse’s job at all. She went to England in September 1854 to look into her failing gold stocks, by coincidence arriving just after the first battle of the Crimean War. By the time she gave up on her gold stocks (she had invested while in Panama), not only had Nightingale and her team left, but so had a second team. Seacole described dropping into various offices informally and asking for a position. She never submitted the required application with references (they are at the National Archives, Kew), nor had she the required hospital experience.

but yes, we'll just have to agree to disagree

AURENCE FOX
@LozzaFox
Fellow humans who are #Sikhs

I am as moved by the sacrifices your relatives made as I am by the loss of all those who die in war, whatever creed or colour.

Please accept my apology for being clumsy in the way I have expressed myself over this matter in recent days.