The Spectator magazine is allergic to the city of Liverpool. Now, having never been there, despite some distant family connections to its 19th Century history (one of my ancestors helped to erect the magnificent St George’s Hall), I cannot comment on whether Liverpool is the sort of place that the Germans should have obligingly finished off in 1939-45 or a place full of cheeky, merry Scousers all singing Beatles tunes and watching Everton and the Reds. Sorry, no idea. But there is something – even to my non-PC eyes – rather grating about how the likes of Rod Liddle, the Speccie’s House Yob, never fails to lob a literary hand grenade at the city. Here it is again:
So the mop-headed ingenue teacher Gillian Gibbons has been released from her torment in Sudan without being horsewhipped or banged up for too long. The Scousers – Ms Gibbons is from Liverpool, naturellement – had insufficient time to organise a candlelit vigil for her or a minute’s silence at Anfield, but they did manage to festoon lots of railings with yellow ribbons and bouquets from the local garage.
Ah, those sentimental scousers. They are such thickies, aren’t they?
Meanwhile, that strange Frank Spencer manqué Gibbons returns safely to Blighty all jolly with stories about how the Sudanese prison authorities gave her lots of apples, what lovely people they all are, and she doesn’t regret a thing, etc. Fine, love — however, on that latter point, we do, so you can pick up the travel bill for the Muslim peers who supposedly sprang you from chokey, you deluded, asinine fool.
She may not be the brightest light in the harbour, but I would love to see Rod Liddle put in an Islamic slammer for two weeks. The benefits would be salutary.
My own rather uncharitable view is that she was released from prison far too soon; having told us all that Islam was a gentle and peaceable religion, she should have been allowed proper time inside to reflect upon this interesting perspective. And without apples. The whole affair also made me worry about my children’s education; teachers interviewed on TV seem to get more stupid, further down the league tables of sentience, with every year that passes. And now we have Gillian Gibbons. Please God, they can’t all be that thick, can they?
Quite possibly, Rodney, she is as dumb as a stump. Naivete might be the worst thing she can be accused of (I must agree to sharing his nagging worries about the sort of folk who are schoolteachers these days). But this sort of gratuitous name-calling against a person imprisoned and threatened with flogging for something so batshit insane is beyond the pale. But hey, let us not turn up the chance to take the piss out of those sentimental scousers.
His article does move on to better ground here, however, where I think Liddle has a decent point:
But – whisper it quietly – some considerable good may have come of the whole shebang. The most unequivocal and persistent protests about Ms Gibbons’ arrest, back home, came from Britain’s self-appointed guardians of Allah, the Muslim groups. Including the Muslim Council of Britain. Note the word ‘unequivocal’. They protested loud and strong and without those previously ubiquitous caveats always beginning with the conjunction ‘but …’. As in ‘We condemn this outrage entirely, but you have to understand that…’ This time there were no buts, just condemnation. And it was truly heartening to see a niqab-clad British woman protesting outside the Sudanese embassy holding aloft a placard bearing the photograph of a teddy bear, under which was written, with wit and acuity, ‘Not in my name’.
Quite possibly true. It may be the case that the sheer, oh-my-god-how-mad-can-they-be craziness of the teddy bear-as M. has made even the more ardent Muslims wonder whether certain regimes are taking their professed religious beliefs a step too far. He may be right.
Seeing how she praised the Sudanese regime, I think that, indeed, she was released too soon. Being a little slow, she hadn’t had time enough to learn.
Well, I’ll go along with what’s his name and Jacob, as long as this is not taken too seriously. Because if it is, then we are effectively saying that she should be imprisoned for voicing her, however demented, opinion.
I must agree to sharing his nagging worries about the sort of folk who are schoolteachers these days
Yes me too. I am of the same generation as the dear deluded lady, and my wife a qualified teacher.
I saw her generation in training and found that 60% were not competent in their subjects let alone have the skill to teach them. Education went to hell in this country 30 years ago.
I love Scousers though! Mind you, all the ones I know would have been busted for cooking up a batch of home brew in the school kitchen, rather than misnaming a Teddy Bear.
Let’s assume that Ms Gibbons was merely a pawn in whatever game the Sudanese government and/or theocracy were playing. I say “assume” but I’m fairly confident.
Now, Mr Liddle is trying to use her as a pawn in whatever daft cause he espouses. So, she should have suffered more to ram home the fact that Sudan is a hell-hole? Like we didn’t know that already?
Right. Which is apparently fine for Jonathan, who considers it “beyond the pale” of Mr. Liddle to joke about keeping the teacher in jail but can’t be bothered to apply the same standard to himself when joking that Mr. Liddle spend some time in an islamic slammer. Liddle was joking too, you see.
I have to agree with Liddle’s characterization of her as a “deluded, asinine fool.” She is. She was arrested on what has to be the most transparently trumped-up charge in the world as a result of choosing to work in a country where everyone knows such abuses are the norm, and she still comes back singing their praises. Idiot.
I agree that Liverpool has nothing to do with any of this and that Mr. Liddle’s gratuitous jibes at the city are off-putting, but he’s right about the woman in question.
Joshua, nonsense. As Rod Liddle suggested the woman should spend a lot longer in the Sudanese jail, he therefore invited my comment that he should suffer such a fate to see how he liked it. He initiated the vile remark, and I kicked him in the gonads, so to speak. Sauce for the goose…..
Definitive take. Mine anyway.
This was never about Islam. Hence Bungle & Co at the MCB talked sense about it. Should we be grateful to them for that? Yes, a little, but in exactly the same way the population of Cheshire are grateful that I don’t wander the streets naked singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Some might get offended, there’s some confederate hold-outs in these parts.
What is truly shocking is the mealy mouthed response from non-muslims. Rowan Williams called it a “cultural faux-pas”, there was much muttering about this being terrible with a leavening of “cultural sensitivities” on Question Time and whatnot. And ya know what? I bet none of these mutterers had even asked a muslim if they were upset over the Bear of Despair. Teddy Bears are sold throughout the Islamic world and are frequently called Muhammed because it’s a very popular name. No dissing is meant and none taken. Hence a restless lynch mob was roused (probably with lies and exaggerations) in Khartoum yet the rest of the Islamic World did nowt. Compare and contrast with the MoToons of Doom.
So why were the MCB man of the match here? Why were our Christian or agnostic/atheist/whatever leaders so weak? Multi-culturalism is the answer. The MCB could get away with calling other Muslims nutters in a way that way too many of our movers and shakers couldn’t. That is pathetic. It is pathetic that the minute anything dons the cloak of religion it’s off-limits to any but co-religionists. It is also pathetic because it’s lazy. It is after all so much easier to support long-standing cultural or religious traditions (or what you think they are) in a completely naive fashion than to actually engage with them and find out what these people believe and form a mature judgement. Hence we get facile nonsense like the Blairmeister’s “Religion of Peace” speech.
I have been following with great interest the antics of the RoP since ’95. Hitherto I had paid it little attention and had quite possibly picked up the stick by the wrong end. I’d only known one Muslim and she was of the very liberal Malaysian variety (and quite foxy). So what happened in ’95? I was dating a theology student. She was lapsed CoE but what really interested her was Islam. She was flat out fascinated by how something which to her was such a blatant load of hooey could be so successful. Now, this girl wasn’t in some ways the sharpest knife in the cutlery drawer but I would trust her take on Islam much more than vacuous believers in the faith of multiculturalism like his Tonyness because she’d actually, you know, read books and written essays and found out facts and thought about them.
The idea that all cultures are equal is merely intellectual shirking. Perhaps that brings us back to the point RAB and others have made about the standard of teaching.
Fair enough.
But it seems to me that by continuing to say nothing but nice things about Sudan in the press after all that happened to her, Ms. Gibbons opens herself to insult as well. I don’t mind Mr. Liddle taking potshots at her. I find it easier to stomach than all the sympathy she’s getting elsewhere.
She was naive. That’s fine, it happens to all of us at some point in our lives. What there is no excuse for is staying naive after you’ve been burned. She’s fair game for ridicule.
Yes Ms Gibbons is definately of my Love & Peace generation. All Cultures are the same. Why cant we all love one another? Does anyone know the chords to Kumbya? I know the type only too well.
I commented on an earlier thread, that the Sudan is the last place on earth to have a mid life crisis, and this is just what this slightly dotty woman had.
Her quote on the news the other night was:-
I went to the Sudan for a bit of an adventure, and got rather more than I bargained for.
Well Quite. Just a silly bitch.
The facts behind the facts here though, is that the whole thing was cooked up by the School Secretary who was having a feud with the Headteacher and wanted to get at her. So poor ‘ol funky Gibbon was a mere tool in her Machiavellian plot.
And I’m really really glad I dont have kids, with the likes of Ms Gibbons on the loose, with a Licence to Commit Edukashun!
Ah but RAB, don’t you see that multi-culturalism is A good thing. And here to stay. I mean, that woman’s from the University of Chicago and I once (almost) applied for a PhD there. You know Fermilab and all that. “The Italian Navigator has entered the new world and found the natives very friendly”. It’s a very good university so clearly she’s right and cutting away a clitoris is merely a life-style choice like buying Boney M records. Except buying the works of the M generally doesn’t involve being held down or the use of a broken Coke bottle.
I am both tough on Boney M and the causes of Boney M. My attitude to FGM is well, you know…
Have to say that one of the funniest off-the-cuff retorts I have heard all year came from, of all places, someone on Virgin FM. Commenting upon Gillian Gibbon’s imprisonment, someone said that a Sudanese jail cell would not be a picnic for anyone and especially not a 54-year old primary school teacher. His assistant responded that it sure wasn’t going to be a ‘teddy bear’s picnic’ either.
She is 54??? OMDG.
I am reminded of accounts of survivors of the Soviet death camps. There were plenty of examples of people who thought their presence there was a big mistake, which would, of course, be corrected as soon as Comrade Stalin found out about it. All those people around them were, of course, clearly guilty of the crimes they were charged with.
An interesting analogy – because it is both appropriate and not.
It is inappropriate in that people sent to death camps were born in the Soviet Union (or Russia) and thus innocent victims of the system in a way that Ms. Gibbons is not. They didn’t choose to move into the oppressive system; they simply found themselves in it. I have a lot more sympathy for people who are born and raised in Sudan and imprisoned for these silly reasons than for westerners who go there out of misplaced ideals.
It is appropriate, however, in that some of the people who end up in concentration camps can have been naive supporters of the system beforehand but should really know better by the time they find themselves caged for arbitrary reasons. Those who sit in cells for “political crimes” and still support the system are difficult for me to understand. However, I can see it as the result of a coping mechanism. Being in a concentration camp in Siberia is no doubt gruelling, and I don’t want to speak to what that kind of mental pressure can do to a person without having been through it myself.
What I completely fail to understand is someone who was in a concentration camp, is let go, and even then thinks nice things about the system that imprisoned her. That is the analogous case with this teacher. I am finding it difficult to be sympathetic to her for this reason.
And now I have to apologize because I completely misread Brian’s comment. Somehow I got the last sentence wrong.
He writes
and somehow I heard “all those people [meaning, the ones who found themselves imprisoned despite sincere support for the system] were, of course, clearly guilty of the crimes they were charged with.”
How embarrassing.
Ms Gibbon may well be ‘from’ Liverpool, but she is a Yorkshirewoman by origin.
I liked Liverpool in my visits to the place – although, sadly, I did not get to see the inside of St George’s Hall.
Yes the Germans did destroy a lot of nice places – but many still remain. And any city where one can walk round in a day – and where it is a short walk from the station to the port has my praise.
Also the people seemed friendly.
One can nit pick – for example the Anglican Cathedral, although the largest in the country, could be better in a few ways. And I could not help thinking whilst visiting the Roman Catholic Cathedral, “if only the Lutyens Cathedral had been built”, but this is indeed nit picking.
The real test is a simple one “would you visit the place again?” and I would.
Liverpool University is my Alma Mater, I was there in 1959 – 1962 and found the locals really friendly. I remember particularly standing in the Kop at Liverpool FC, cheering for Leyton Orient. It was a great game of football which all of us enjoyed. The local beer was not very good though, Bent’s ugh.
The MCB were not “unequivocal” – they clearly stated that if it were something else, not a bear, e.g. a pig…blah blah.
Also remember that Sudan wanted to hand the teacher over to a Muslim representative. Ratchets, both of them.