So the silent majority show some backbone.
A council has dramatically abandoned its plan to take down a seaside statue of Lord Baden-Powell today hours after blaming police for the decision following pressure from Black Lives Matter protesters who branded the Scout founder racist, homophobic and fascist.
Former Scouts, some from more than 100 miles away, had rushed to Dorset and fended off a removal crew in Poole Quay at 7.30am as they vowed to defend the monument and the campaign to remove approaching 80 historic monuments in Britain hurtles on.
And this afternoon Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole (BCP) Councillor Mark Howell said that the removal is off for today because contractors didn’t want to work in a ‘circus’, adding: ‘It is possible we might not take it away at all’.
At last! A small pool of sanity. But not just sanity, but resolve. A willingness to stand up to tyrants and bullies. This needs to happen more often. I am beginning to suspect that BLM will overplay their hand and ordinary people will decide that enough is enough. This action is an indication that ordinary British people won’t be pushed about by nasty hard left activists. More power to their elbow. And it’s nice to see some good news for once.
Local MP Conor Burns, who called the plan a ‘huge error of judgement’, said following the postponement: ‘It is now abundantly clear that the statement issued by @BCPCouncil yesterday saying Baden Powell’s statue was being removed on advice from @dorsetpolice was not true. Who wrote it? Who signed it off? After events in London and Bristol it isn’t acceptable to undermine Dorset cops’.
That sounds an awful lot like back-peddling to me. I suspect that had these people not stood up to them, the craven cowards in the council would have gone ahead and removed the statue – all because racism.
It goes without saying that the pertson who claimed the attempted removal was at the request of Dorset Police will not be named, disciplined, or fired. After all, what’s just another politically motivated liar in a local council?
What a pity it took determined pensioners for the volte face to happen.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb has written about the tyranny of the minority in some detail. Because most people are polite and accommodating, a small but vocal and trenchant minority can make enormous gains by forcing their issue forward at deafening volume. To many, it can then as a result be mistaken for a majority or mainstream view. It isn’t, however, and it’s very far from being so. Although we’ve had a ceaseless torrent of agitated left-wing hectoring roiling through the media in the past fortnight, that isn’t how the majority think, and when pushed to their very limits, that mainstream will eventually be so exasperated and insulted that they start pushing back. Baden Powell obviously instilled some decent mettle in the Scouts, and Lord above did we need it from them given the craven cowardice of the political classes. Didn’t see it coming, but a tenner on the Scouts for the win, and let’s hope they’re scouting for a larger force marshalling further back.
Those fine gentlemen are not wearing the uniform of the Scout Association but that of a group that broke away when they nancy-boyed the uniform in the 1970’s. Good for them and the others but note that article said 3 times that the decision not to remove was temporary.
Baden Powell was a man of his time and so alluded to the dangers of w*nking in Scouting For Boys but I was still being told that by grown ups in the 1960’s (one went so far as to warn us we would run out of sperm and never make babies).
Any mention of support from the Scout Association ? Thought not, so pleased I had left before they admitted girls.
Just as well they are Covid closed at present or all the leaders would be rushing around outwoking each other for being insufficiently supportive of BLM, or worse, being put on trial by those supposedly in their care.