Penguin68

The point I was making was that Crick himself said, on the radio, that he only found one person, and that wasn't corroborated, who said that he believed that Farage currently, as an adult now, expressed racist beliefs, or was a racist. Nobody is arguing I believe that as a teenager he did so, or was remembered as doing so. It's surely key whether he is now a racist, not whether he said racist things as a legal child and 40 years ago.

What Farage did and said 40 years ago and what he does, says and believes now may be different. Just because a 40 year old story is retold now on the BBC does not make it current news. We are not being asked to vote for school boy Farage but for today's man. I was an anarcho-syndicalist 55 years ago, but I'm not now. It will be sad if racists today vote for Farage because he may have been a racist 40 years ago. And as for anti-semites.. . They parade in the streets daily. If he gets their votes he's going to get in.

Michael Crick, the author who first uncovered this story in his recently published book on Farage was interviewed on the Today programme this morning and was clear that he could only get one person he interviewed, and that was unsubstantiated, to argue that the adult Farage was in any way currently racist, and he admitted he tried to get this ascertation from interviewees who otherwise couldn't stand Farage. Farage was clearly a contrarian as a school boy, and very possibly not very nice, but it is the man now, not the boy then, that should concern us. It is his current policies, his competences and the key people in his party we should be focusing on, not 40 year old scuttlebut. That's just lazy.

There is a position taken on these pages, by certain people, that all car drivers are careless idiots and all cyclists saints, who ought to be able to wear full camouflage gear (i.e. dark clothing and no lights at night) and still cycle unmolested down the middle of the road and through red lights and across zebra crossings without stopping for pedestrians. Any suggestion that an incident may not be at the hands of an 'ordinary' driver but maybe someone additionally committing crime, which may, perhaps, trump the sin of just dangerous driving is poo-poo-ed and rubbished. So be it. I understand about trolls. But it does get wearing at times.

Yes, both the RSV and the pneumonia seem to be once-only jabs, but if you haven't had the pneumonia very well worth having.

There is a vaccine against RSV, but also one against pneumonia; I've had both. But maybe you've only had one. The pneumonia was offered to me several years before RSV, which I think was only last year. Worth checking what you have had.

Because most people reading these threads otherwise think it's risk free?

It might also be RSV, also going round. Or a nasty Corona virus ('common cold') you haven't had before (Covid is also one of those).

As the erstwhile driver was arrested for dangerous driving and robbery it may well be that quality driving was not top of his mind at the time. This is not an excuse but it may be an explanation for the incident, which would place it in a different space than just 'poor quality driving'.

I'm not, I'm defending this site. Litigious individuals, and it's now a fashion, can make publishers lives horrid. Or do you want the site closed down?

If I believe something to be a libel I would hardly repeat it. Would you?

Admin, there are people saying things on this thread which are almost certainly libellous, and open to legal action. Can you remind people posting that they need to be circumspect in their attacks on individuals if they don't want this site closed down through litigation. Discussion about Dulwich College's past attitudes is one thing, attacks on named individuals currently another.

Racism and fascism are not the same thing. There are for instance left wing anti semites - sadly rather too many in the Labour Party IMHO. Indeed Labour has always had a bedrock of racism in some areas, I recall many trades unions strongly resisting employment of both people from the Indian sub continent and the West Indies. And teenage posturing is by no means always a gateway to knowing what the adult will emerge as. And the Guardian as a source of information and analysis is hardly an unbiased source in this instance, as the Telegraph wouldn't be in arguing the opposite.

I wouldn't hold your breathe that it would be allowed. They are not there to facilitate protest.

Not in 2026 you won't.