‘Stop whining, Remainers, and save the UK’

(Image credit: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

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1. Stop whining, Remainers, and save the UK
2. The combination of Covid and class has been devastating for Britain’s poorest
3. Rogue therapists should be treated as abusers
4. It’s time for the honest truth about school closures
5. Mispronouncing or changing people’s names is just another form of racism

published 26 January 2021

1. Stop whining, Remainers, and save the UK

Hugo Rifkind in The Times

“For an English Remainer, it makes bluntly no sense to have fought tooth and nail to prevent your country from leaving one stable, peaceful multinational union while being unable to manage more than a shrug at the prospect of it leaving another one. I’m not asking you to swap your terrible blue EU beret for a tartan one with orange hair at the back but I am asking you to get over your pique at losing in 2016. Think about how much of a fuss you’d be making right now if it were English nationalists lobbying for secession from everywhere else. Come on, you’d be going nuts.”

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“From the very start, the pandemic was always going to be shaped by the inequalities that define contemporary Britain. This is a virus that disproportionately inflicts the worst illness – and death – on those with underlying health conditions such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity, which disproportionately affect the poor. While middle-class professionals have the luxury of working in Covid-compliant homes, millions of working-class Britons cannot perform their tasks remotely. Many have no option but to cram into public transport en route to workplaces which often do not enforce safe social distancing to protect them.”

“The symptoms of takeover follow a recognisable pattern. Having won trust, the rogue therapist/counsellor/guru (this is not a world with clear, commonly accepted qualifications) convinces the client that a close family member – most commonly a parent – has practised something truly appalling such as running a paedophile ring or selling the client for sexual abuse. This is done not by producing evidence, but by thought control, sometimes masquerading as ‘recovered memory’. A false belief establishes a false logic. The controlling person tells the victim that she (the victim is more commonly a woman) must sever all contact with her family and friends.”

“Parents, social workers, and teachers want the best for children. But they cannot give them the best when they have no definitive timeline to work with. This government has dragged its feet and twiddled its thumbs about telling those most involved in the care of children when schools will close and open, leaving everyone mentally exhausted and inadequately prepared. If schools are going to be closed until after Easter, it is time for the government to stop delaying the inevitable and make the decision that could help everyone do better.”

“Let me tell you exactly why my name is important – and pronouncing it correctly is key to my identity. I know a lot of people who are reading this will know this story all too well. That gaping anxiety you feel just before you introduce yourself to someone. Writing this piece made me tap into a memory of my five-year-old self, when it was time for roll call at school. I could feel my name coming closer as I squeezed the seat of my chair, held my breath and prayed the substitute teacher didn’t butcher my name. It had taken about five months for the first one to get it right. I went home and told my mum that when I grew up and had kids, I would give them European or normative names so no one would laugh at them. My mum sat me down and said, ‘you don’t even know how beautiful your name is.’ It was the first time she told me what my name meant – or maybe it was the first time I had actually truly heard her.”

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