I have a problem with blackface and yellowface, generally when there are more than capable actors who could have taken the role, but I make exceptions in some situations.
Take, for example, the news that Little Britain and Come Fly with Me are being removed from streaming services because of what are now deemed racist portrayals. Matt Lucas, who plays half the roles in each, has even said that the shows were right for the time but theyâre not what he would make today. Yet I donât find myself being troubled by his and David Walliamsâs characters, since in both they are equal-opportunity about it, even going so far as to address racism head-on with Come Fly with Meâs Ian Foot, a clearly racist character.
I always viewed everyone from Ting Tong to Precious as caricatures viewed through a British lens, and it is through their comedy that they shine a light on the nationâs attitudes. Matt and David might not like me grouping their work in with Benny Hillâs Chow Mein character, who, while offensive to many Chinese, tended to expose the discomfort of the English âstraight manâ character, usually portrayed by Henry McGee. I canât think of one where Mein doesnât get the upper hand. I like to think these characters all come from the same place.
Sometimes, especially in comedy, you need people of the same race as most of the audience to point to their nationâs attitudes (and often intolerance)âitâs often more powerful for them as itâs not seen as preaching. Where I have a problem is when characters are founded on utterly false stereotypes, e.g. the bad Asian driver, the loud black man.
And can you imagine the furore if every character portrayed by Matt and David in Come Fly with Me was white? They would be sharply criticized for not being representative of the many cultures at a modern British airport.
I donât turn a blind eye to brownface in Hong Kong (Chinese actors playing Indians) or the mangled Cantonese used to dub white actors, but the same rules apply: if it shines a light on a situation, helps open our collective eyes, and make us better people, then surely we can accept those?
I Tweeted tonight something I had mentioned on this blog many years ago: Vince Powellâs sitcom Mind Your Language, set in 1970s Britain, where Barry Evansâs Jeremy Brown character, an ESL teacher, has to deal with his highly multicultural and multiracial class. The joke is always, ultimately, on Mr Brown, or the principal, Miss Courtenay, for their inability to adjust to the new arrivals and to understand their cultures. Maybe itâs rose-coloured glasses, but I donât remember the students being shown as second-class; they often help Jeremy Brown out of a pickle.
Importantly, many of the actors portrayed their own races, and, if the DVD commentary is to be believed, they were often complimented by people of the same background for their roles.
Powell based some of his stories on real life: a foreign au pair worked for them and brought home her ESL classmates, and he began getting ideas for the sitcom.
However, at some stage, this show was deemed to be racist. As I Tweeted tonight, âI loved Mind Your Language but white people said the depictions of POC were racist. Hang on, isnât it more racist to presume we canât complain ourselves? Most of the actors in that depicted their own race.
âI can only speak for my own, and I didnât find the Chinese character racist. Because there were elements of truth in there, she was portrayed by someone of my ethnicity, and the scripts were ultimately joking about the British not adjusting well to immigrant cultures.
âWhich, given how Leavers campaigned about Brexit, continues to be true. I get why some blackface and yellowface stuff needs to go but canât we have a say?
âTonight on TV1 news, there were two white people commenting on the offensiveness of minority portrayals in Little Britain and Come Fly with Me. I hope someone sees the irony in that.â
However, if any minorities depicted by Matt and David are offended by their workâTing Tong, Asuka and Nanako are the only Asiatic characters they do that I can think of, so east Asians arenât even that well representedâof course I will defer to your judgement. I canât pretend to know what itâs like for someone of Pakistani heritage to see Mattâs Taaj Manzoor, or someone with a Jamaican heritage to see Precious Little. However, unlike some commentators, I do not presume that members of their community are powerless to speak up, and they are always welcome on this forum.
I donât profess to be an expert on how Hong Kong law functions these days with its mix of old British ordinances and the laws made after 1997, but one thing that struck me with at least the news reports covering the criminalizing of insults against âMarch of the Volunteersâ, the national anthem of the Peopleâs Republic of China, is whether parodyâa fundamental part of free speechâwill still be permitted.
I donât have a problem with the anthem being taught to children as it was sung long before 1949, the establishment of the PRC. It was a wartime anthem, which people like my father knew, having been born in the 1930s at the time of the SinoâJapanese War. It is historical, and it has meaning. It is arguably even more familiar to older Chinese than the Republic of Chinaâs anthem generally sung on the island of Taiwan. But, even back then, âMarch of the Volunteersâ had picked up this parody:
è”·äŸ! èČ·ćżçèèžè±è!
If I recall correctly, the parody emerged when the Communists and Nationalists were trying to entice the citizenry over to their side, and the Communists were promising food.
I wonât go in to parody and its relationship to freedom of speech here; there are plenty of resources on it online.
But does it mean that repeating the parody lyrics would put me at risk in Hong Kong?
Of course it has escaped no one that the law was passed on June 4, a ballsy move by Beijing.
Meanwhile, a few members of the UK government have talked about giving BN(O) (British National [Overseas]) passport holders a pathway to British citizenship, leading some to say there would be a brain drain. What I will say here is: the British have talked about defending the rights of Hong Kong people under the joint declaration ever since 1997âindeed, even before, with the Blair-led oppositionâand nothing has happened. Iâve gone into my issues entering the UK with this passport before, so youâll excuse me if I say that actions speak more loudly than words. British politicians have been high on rhetoric for over two decades on this issue and I have no reason to believe the least trustworthy lot they have ever elected.
I disagree that they are interfering with Chinese affairs if they are simply looking after those that identify themselves as British, but at the same time I donât think Beijingâs foreign ministry has anything to be concerned about. The British have their own doorstep to think about, and the prospect of millions of Hong Kong Chinese heading there was too hard for them to stomach under Major or Blair, and I do not expect that attitudes have changed.
You couldnât make this up.
Fortunately for us all, RussInCheshire on Twitter has summed up Cumgate, or whatever itâs being dubbed in the UK.
No matter how bad our politics could get, I think we should be pleased that we have not followed the UK, and that we have dealt with COVID-19 far better than they have. Given the behaviour of their government, perhaps this is no surprise.
I donât know how to combine the lot in one embed, so I hope Russ will forgive me for quoting his Twitter thread in full. The original may be found here.
The week in Tory (Cummings special):
1. Dominic Cummings, one of the few men to have ever been found in contempt of Parliament, moved onto contempt for everything
2. When the story broke, and he was accused of doing things that look bad, he said he didn’t care how things looked
3. Then ministers said press outrage meant nothing, only the opinion of the people mattered
4. Then polls showed 52% of people wanted Cummings to resign
5. So Cummings decided to show the public some respect, by turning up 30 minutes late to make his explanation
6. He began by saying he wasn’t speaking for the govt, which must be why he was in the Rose Garden of 10 Downing Street
7. Then the self-styled “enemy of the Islington media elite” said his wife, who works in the media, had been ill in their house in Islington
8. But she was only a bit ill, so he popped home, got himself nice and infected, then went back to Downing Street for meetings with lots of vitally important people in the middle of a national crisis
9. But then he got ill too, so then it was suddenly important
10. Sadly he couldn’t get childcare in London, even though 3 immediate relatives live within 3 miles of his London home
11. So because he was carrying a virus that can cross a 2 metre distance and kill, he immediately locked himself in a car with his wife and child for 5 hours
12. He then drove 264 miles without stopping in a Land Rover that gets maybe 25 MPG
13. Then the scourge of the metropolitan elites made himself extra-relatable by describing his family’s sprawling country estate, multiple houses and idyllic woodlands
14. He explained that he’d warned about a coronavirus years ago in his blog
15. Then it was revealed he actually secretly amended old blogs after he’d returned from Durham
16. And anyway, if he’d warned years ago, why was he so massively unprepared and slow to react?
17. Then he said he was too ill to move for a week
18. But in the middle of that week, presumably with “wonky eyes”, he drove his child to hospital
19. Then he said that to test his “wonky eyes” he put his wife and child in a car and drove 30 miles on public roads
20. Then it was revealed his wife drives, so there was no reason for the “eye test”, cos she could have driven them back to London
21. Then it was revealed the “eye test” trip to a local tourist spot took place on his wife’s birthday
22. Then cameras filmed as he threw a cup onto the table, smirked and left
23. And then it emerged his wife had written an article during the time in Dunham, describing their experience of being in lockdown in London, which you’d definitely do if you weren’t hiding anything
24. A govt scientific advisor said “more people will die” as a result of what Cummings had done.
25. Boris Johnson said he “wouldn’t mark Cummings ” down for what he’d done.
26. The Attorney General said it was ok to break the law if you were acting on instinct
27. The Health Minister said it was OK to endanger public health if you meant well
28. Johnson said Cummings’ “story rings true” because his own eyesight was fine before coronavirus, but now he needs glasses
29. But in an interview with The Telegraph 5 years ago, Johnson said he needed glasses cos he was “blind as a bat”
30. Michael Gove went on TV and said it was “wise” to drive 30 miles on public roads with your family in the car to test your eyesight
31. The DVLA tweeted that you should never, ever do this
32. Then ministers started claiming Cummings had to go to Durham because he feared crowds attacking his home. The streets were empty because we were observing the lockdown.
33. And then a minister finally resigned
34. Steve Baker, Richard Littlejohn, Isabel Oakeshott, Tim Montgomerie, Jan Moir, Ian Dale, Julia Hartley Brewer, 30 Tory MPs, half a dozen bishops and the actual Daily Mail said Cummings should go
35. The govt suggested we can ignore them, because they’re all left-wingers
36. Then a vicar asked Matt Hancock if other people who had been fined for doing exactly what Cummings did would get their fine dropped. Matt Hancock said he’d suggest it to the govt
37. The govt said no within an hour. Cummings’ statement had lasted longer than that
38. And if the guidelines were so clear, why were people being stopped and fined for driving to find childcare in the first place?
39. Then a new poll found people who wanted Cummings sacked had risen from 52% to 57%
40. Cummings is considered the smartest man in the govt
41. And in the middle of all this, in case we take our eye off it: we reached 60,000 deaths. One of the highest per capita death rates worldwide.
42. We still face Brexit under this lot.
43. It’s 4 years until an election
44. And it’s still only Wednesday
The Hon David Clark MP is not a story in this context. Though the former opposition leader’s 1,000 km round trips are.
Out of curiosity, why do people visit Autocade? We havenât had a big jump in visits with COVID-19 (contrary to some other motoring sites), as I imagine encyclopĂŠdias arenât as fun as, say, AROnline, where at least you can reminisce about the British motor industry that was, back in the day when Britain had a functioning government that seemed terrible at the time when no one could imagine how much worse it could get. Obviously we havenât had as many new models to record, but are they the reason people pop by? Or are the old models the reason? Or the coverage of the Chinese market, which few Anglophone sites seem to do? If you are an Autocade fan reading this, please feel free to let us know why in the comments.
One moan about Facebook. Go on.
Sometimes when I pop inâand that remains rarelyâand look at the Lucire fan page, Iâll spot an automated Tweet that has appeared courtesy of IFTTT. Itâs had, say, no views, or one view. I think, âSince there have been no real interactions with this bot entry, maybe I should delete it and feed it in manually, because surely Facebook would give something that has been entered directly on to its platform better organic reach than something that a bot has done?â
With that thought process, I delete it and enter the same thing in manually.
Except now, as has happened so many times before, the page preview is corruptedâFacebook adds letters to the end of the URL, corrupting it, so that the preview results in a 404. This is an old bug that goes back yearsâI spotted it when I used Facebook regularly, and that was before 2017. Itâs not every link but over the last few weeks there have been two. You then have to go and edit the text to ask people, âPlease donât click on the site preview because Facebook is incapable of providing the correct link.â Now youâre down some views because people think youâve linked a 404. Not everyoneâs going to read your explanation about Facebookâs incompetence. (Once again, this reminds me why some people say I encounter more bugs there than othersâI donât, but not everyone is observant.)
This series of events is entirely counterintuitive because it means that bot activity is prioritized over actual activity on Facebook. Bot activity is more accurate and links correctly. And so we come back to the old, old story I have told many times about Facebook and bots and how the platform is bot city. In 2014, I rang the alarm bells; and I was astonished that in 2019 Facebook claims it had to delete over 5,400 million bot accounts. You should have listened to me then, folksâunless, of course, bots are part of the growth strategy, and of course they are.
So, when feeding in links, remember this. Facebook: friendly to bots, not to humans. Itâs probably not a bad way to approach their site anyway.
Iâve looked at my May blogging stats going back a decade (left sidebar, for those on the desktop skin) and itâs always quieter. I blog less. I wonder why this is. The beginning of hibernation? The fact that less interesting stuffâs happening in late autumn as the seasons change?
Finally, a podcast (or is it a blogcast, since it’s on my blog?) where I’m not “reacting” to something that Olivia St Redfern has put on her Leisure Lounge series. Here are some musings about where we’re at, now we are at Level 3.
Some of my friends, especially my Natcoll students from 1999â2000, will tell you that I love doing impressions. They say Rory Bremner’s are shit hot and that mine are halfway there. It’s a regret that I haven’t been able to spring any of these on you. Don’t worry, I haven’t done any here. But one of these days âŠ
I know what youâre thinking. âDid he have six kids or only fiveâ. Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, I've kinda lost track myself.
Don’t worry, I won’t make this too regular, but as I had done some more number-crunching of the available stats during the daytime, I thought I’d share them. Iâve noticed that some countries update their test numbers on a less regular basis, e.g. France, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland, though Worldometers now has updated ones since my last COVID-19 post. Franceâs test figure hasnât changed, so we can safely conclude that its infection rate as a percentage of tests done is lower than whatâs cited below. The same applies to Singapore.
New Zealand has dipped below 2 per cent, finally, but thanks to rounding itâs cited as 2·00 per cent below. These figures include what Dr Ashley Bloomfield announced an hour ago. Happily, the US has started to see a fall since I last did these figuresâthereâs one post I didnât write even though I had the calculations ready (it was too late at night for me to compose something cogent). Goes to show how quickly the landscape changes.
I had overestimated the number of tests Sweden had done: it turns out they havenât increased in number at the same rate as the fortnight before, though my use of 75,000 in the previous table wasnât far off. Despite my overestimation, their infection rate continues to rise.
The UK has also risen but not at the same rate, though judging by Twitter there, some are questioning whether deaths in aged care facilities are being included.
Germany should be happy with its rate going from the 9s into the 7s.
France 147,863 of 333,807 = 44·30%*
Spain 180,659 of 650,755 = 27·76%
UK 98,476 of 398,916 = 24·69%
USA 644,089 of 3,258,879 = 19·76%
Sweden 11,927 of 74,600 = 15·99%
Italy 165,155 of 1,117,404 = 14·78%
Switzerland 26,336 of 199,000 = 13·23%
Germany 134,753 of 1,728,357 = 7·80%
Singapore 3,699 of 72,680 = 5·09%*
KSA 5,862 of 150,000 = 3·91%
New Zealand 1,401 of 70,160 = 2·00%
South Korea 10,613 of 538,775 = 1·97%
Australia 6,462 of 377,024 = 1·71%
Hong Kong 1,017 of 116,273 = 0·87%
Taiwan 395 of 49,748 = 0·79%
I can cite these COVID-19 calculations (infections as a proportion of tests done) with a bit more confidence than the last lot, where many countriesâ testing figures had not updated. I see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has released its total test numbers now, and they show a pretty good result, too.
Compared to my post of the 7th inst., there are improvements in France, Italy, Switzerland and Germany, while Spain has shown a marked and positive improvement (from 39·58 per cent to 28·25 per cent).
The UKâs delay and its initial reliance on herd immunity, with sycophants up and down the country agreeing, is showing up now as its number grows slightly, from 20·4 per cent on the 7th to 23·88 per cent with the latest data.
The USâs numbers are holding fairly steadily with an increase of 0·8 per cent since the 7th (to 19·78 per cent).
Swedenâs total test figure is one of two inaccurate ones here, having remained unchanged since the last tables, which obviously cannot be right. I estimate they have done around 75,000 tests so far, which would bring the figure to 13·98 per cent, fairly close to the 7thâs, rather than the 19·16 per cent that the Worldometersâ table would have me calculate.
Also statistically similar are Switzerland, South Korea, Australia and Hong Kong, though Hong Kongâs total test figure is also inaccurate (unchanged from the 7th). Singapore is showing a rise with the reports of community transmission. New Zealand is showing a small drop (2·71 to 2·15 per cent), though the percentage change here is less than what the USâs is.
Taiwan continues to see its percentage decline with another 8,000 tests done and only an additional 17 infections since the 7thâs post.
France 132,591 of 333,807 = 39·72%
Spain 169,496 of 600,000 = 28·25%
UK 84,279 of 352,974 = 23·88%
USA 560,433 of 2,833,112 = 19·78%
Italy 156,363 of 1,010,193 = 15·48%
Sweden 10,483 of c. 75,000 = c. 13·98%*
Switzerland 25,449 of 193,800 = 13·13%
Germany 127,854 of 1,317,887 = 9·70%
KSA 4,462 of 115,585 = 3·86%
Singapore 2,532 of 72,680 = 3·48%
New Zealand 1,349 of 62,827 = 2·15%
South Korea 10,537 of 514,621 = 2·05%
Australia 6,359 of 362,136 = 1·76%
Hong Kong 1,010 of 96,709 = 1·04%*
Taiwan 393 of 47,215 = 0·83%
As a dual national, I hope thereâs some exaggeration or selective quoting in the Bristol Post about its report of former police officer Mike Rowland, whoâs stuck in Auckland with his wife Yvonne. Apparently, New Zealand is in âpandemoniumâ and he feels like heâs in âAlcatrazâ.
As we are most certainly not in pandemonium, the British Crown may have to ponder if it needs to reopen some of the cases Mr Rowland was once involved in due to unreliable witness testimony. Then again, if it can keep a foreign national like Julian Assange indefinitely and subject him to psychological torture as well as the risk of COVID-19 infection, perhaps it wonât need to ponder a thing.
Mr Rowlandâs not a fan of our breakfast television, either, saying that it makes Piers Morgan a âgodâ. There actually is some truth to the quality of our breakfast telly depending on which channel he has come across (I wonât name names), and I recommend that he switch to another. Go a bit further up the dial, and Aljazeera English has a whole variety of ex-BBC presenters speaking in RP that might make him feel less at home.
And Iâve my own stories about the inability to get answers from the British High Commission, so I sympathize on this note.
But given the choice between being stuck in Aotearoa and being amongst the control group that is Great Britain and Northern Ireland, where the governmentâs sense of British exceptionalism meant that it delayed locking things down, so much so that the PM himself has COVID-19, I would be quite happy to be in the land Down Under.
Mr Rowland may have missed the (disputed) Murdoch Press (which usually leans right) report that suggested that Boris Johnson’s senior adviser said it was ‘too bad’ if ‘some pensioners die’, consistent with Mr Johnson’s own position that Britain would pursue a strategy of herd immunityâand consistent with what the British government initially announced, with sycophants in full agreement.
I admit Iâve called our government âa bunch of Blairitesâ but Iâd take them over their lot, including their Mr Johnson who does less convincing prime ministerial impressions than Neville Chamberlain. Their mass U-turn had to happen as it appeared the British people figured out their lives were being put in danger and forced the government’s hand.
I realize he misses the comforts of home and I would, too, in his shoes, though equally Iâd be grateful to be alive, in a country where even he acknowledges that food is readily available and we havenât suffered the extent of panic buying that the UK has seen. If only Alcatraz were this pleasant.
Iâve heard world leaders describe the fight against COVID-19 as a war, and there are some parallels.
As any student of history knows, there was such a thing as the Munich Agreement before World War II. Iâve managed to secure the summarized English translation below.
For those wondering why the UK initially thought herd immunity would be its official answer to COVID-19, placing millions of people in danger, Iâve located the following document, which was previously covered by the Official Secrets Act.
The British PM confirms heâs been in contact with the virus in this video from the Murdoch Press, cited by The Guardianâs Carole Cadwalladr:
âIâm shaking hands continuously. I was at a hospital the other night where there were actually some Coronavirus patients & I shook hands with everybody. People can make up their own mind but I think itâs very important to keep shaking hands.âpic.twitter.com/mvPEE13udm
Iâd far rather have the action taken by our governmentthan the UKâs when it comes to flattening the curve on coronavirus, and the British response reminds me of this 2018 post.
Just because the chief scientific adviser there has a knighthood and talks posh isnât a reason to trust him, his judgement or even his âexpertiseâ if science says otherwise.
When my father went into hospital in September 2019, the doctorsâ lack of treatmentâbecause they determined he was âdyingâ and that that was sufficient reason to deny him the essentials of life and that it would be a âmiracleâ if he regained consciousness, whereas my partner and I determined he was âdehydratedâ (we were right)âI was forced to ask the palliative nurse about this so-called âpolicyâ. Dad did, after all, wake up after we demanded he be given saline and sustenance within hours, leading me to wonder just why a team of doctors were so obsessed with killing him.
âWhoâs next?â I asked.
She looked at me quizzically.
âWhoâs next? Is it the differently abled? Homosexuals? Jews? Iâm sorry, but the parallels are all too evident to me.â
During this time, a Dr Mark Jones in the UK came into my Twittersphere and we exchanged a number of Tweets.
Mark essentially said that this was an unwritten UK government policy, and showed me numerous examples of elder neglect and abuse in his country. Maybe I should say âour countryâ since itâs the only one I have a current passport for, having got too busy to renew my Kiwi one (not that it would have much use at present).
The reasons were financial. The fewer OAPs there were, the less theyâd have to pay out in pensions.
Therefore, it was no surprise that Dadâs treatment at a British-run rest home compared less favourably than Te Hopai, where he wound up, although in Bupaâs defence they have taken our complaints seriously, apologized, and have invited us to see the improvements.
The less generous might have branded Mark a conspiracy theorist but Sir Patrick Vallance, the UKâs chief scientific adviser, seems to advance a position directly compatible with Markâs observations.
From what I can make out, heâs quite happy for the UK to get infected with coronavirus with the expectation that 60 per cent of the Union will develop immunityâalthough from all my reading of this approach, a proportion of older people who contract it will die. It appears a callous approach to just let a disease comeâthe UK isnât closing its borders or banning mass gatherings, but instead is welcoming its microbic visitor with crumpets and tea. Yes, they are advising those who feel sick to self-isolate, and that is sensible, but it’s the rest that makes little sense.
Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson preempts this as he said without emotion, ‘Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.’
Even Jeremy Hunt appeared to break ranks with the government in one interview.
The likely result will be a thinning out of British OAPs.
When I first told my partner this, she was shocked, but I advanced my own conspiracy theory: âIf you begin with the premise that Dominic Cummings is out to destroy Britainâits institutions, and now its peopleâthen all of this fits his agenda.â
The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, after Sajid Javid found himself in a position where even he couldnât go along with what was being peddled by 10 Downing Street, making you wonder just what horrors await, will doubtless be thrilled at the savings to the UK pension fund.
PS.: Thank you, Tomas Pueyo (the man in the screen), for reacting the way you did to Prof John Edmunds’ position that the UK has given up on containing the virus and that people will die. You have spoken, silently, for many of us.âJY
