From the Man Cave XL

I know how much my readers (both of them) enjoy the Man Cave columns and, since there has not been one for a while – I have not been at home much – I thought I would squeeze one in (or maybe ‘out’ would be more appropriate) before I disappear to Lanzarote with Mrs Watson (she insisted on coming) for a week of whatever Lanzarote has to offer.

Thereafter, in very rapid succession, I head to USA to see our daughter in Missouri and then China to do a lecture tour. I then go to Edinburgh to a conference to be abused by my colleagues in the nursing profession, most of whom hate my guts as I did not play the game called ‘Nurses are Heroes’ during Covid.

The Man Cave turns XL

Of course, I mean that the Man Cave has turned 40 (and not ‘extra-large’) by which I mean that this is the 40^th column. We’ll soon be into the Ls properly and heading towards the Cs. At least if nobody reads the column, they can have an educational experience trying to decipher the Roman numerals used in the title (and copied from our illustrious editor who used to use them in his regular and hilarious Frank Reports published on the old TNC website). It’s a bit of ostentation really, like the way the BBC (for reasons I cannot fathom) still puts the date a programme was made at the end of the credits in Roman numerals. What is wrong with simply using the date in the four-digit notation we all use is unclear.

Sarah Doolally

Described by the admirable and eloquent Gavin Ashenden as ‘the amateur archbishop’, Archbishop Sarah Mullaly has dropped an enormous clanger. No sooner had she received the bearded bigot that is Tahir Ashrafi and his anonymous wife at Lambeth Palace to present him with an award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation, than she had to withdraw it from him.

When the award was given to Maulana Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi (did the name not alert anyone?) there was an outcry about his support for blasphemy laws in Pakistan, his proclaimed support for Osama bin Laden and his criticism of the UK government for awarding a knighthood to Salman Rushdie. The fact that the award was given on the 25^th anniversary of 9/11 was extraordinary. Lambeth Palace clearly has no idea about ‘optics’.

The award is given in the name of Hubert Walter, a former Archbishop and royal adviser from the 12^th century who accompanied Richard the Lionheart to the Crusades and helped him to negotiate with Saladin. The fact that the Church of England can reinterpret the actions of a Christian negotiator with a Muslim warlord as ‘interfaith cooperation’ speaks volumes. Those negotiations were backed up by military force on both sides… and we won!

Piddling about in Piddington

Our editor, Frank, has just covered the hypocrisy around what took place in Piddington. I share his views, but I also thought it was a hilarious gesture, voting to leave the UK as a result of proposals to swamp the sleepy Oxfordshire village with over a thousand male ‘asylum seekers’. As Nick Dixon points out on The Current Thing, his podcast, these men are not asylum seekers. They have come from France, a place most people go to in order to get away from the UK. Many Brits have second homes there.

Various labels are applied to the hordes of Mohammedans with erections who swarm up our beaches by the thousand weekly. ‘Asylum seekers’ is one and ‘refugees’ is another. But these people are, almost to a man, economic migrants and scroungers who are here for whatever they can get. And that includes a great many of our young women. I think we need a new term for the young Muslim men with bad motives who arrive on our shores and I have coined the word ‘Rapeistanis’, as it seems to cover both their origins and intentions.

I will be using this term regularly from this point on, hoping that it enters the lexicon. Who knows, if it catches on we could hear it on the BBC and read it in the broadsheets. Perhaps there is a forthcoming new entry to the Oxford English Dictionary. In fact, I imagine that I could well be the next recipient of the Hubert Walter award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation. How do I address a female archbishop?

Roger Watson is a retired academic, editor and writer. He writes regularly for a range of conservative journals including The Salisbury Review and The European Conservative. He has travelled and worked extensively in the Far East and the Middle East. He lives in Kingston upon Hull, UK. His Substack can be found here.