Slavery

I wholeheartedly condemn slavery. Today there is more work to be done to combat what is called modern slavery. There is not much specifically modern about the traffic in people who are bound to employers in low wage slavery in illegal occupations or working illegally because they did not gain legal entry to the country concerned. There is slavery and criminality behind the drug trades, the exploitation of some women and the passage of people illegally to new countries for the profit of the people traffickers. There is slavery in some illegal businesses employing illegal migrants and exploiting them over hours, pay  and living conditions as they are outside the legal protections of our society. These  are the slaveries we should oppose and prevent. These are the slaveries we can do something about. They are a blot on our generations.

Past slavery was horrific, but there is nothing we can do to ease the burdens or compensate the victims when they are long dead. Many past societies were slave based. The UK faced slavery  and serfdom from the Romans, Normans, Barbary pirates and others, just as it worked with other countries to promote slave plantations in the eighteenth century. The UK turned from such practices with a successful anti slavery Parliament led campaign, helping the world to new standards of conduct.The Royal Navy played an important role in stopping the trade in people.

I do not expect compensation  to be paid to the UK by those countries that invaded us, enslaved people, took their lands and abused them. Our attention should be on the present and future. There are too many current day abuses which we can do something about which should be our priority. We cannot put right the conduct of people who died hundreds of years ago which we condemn.Our ancestors fought against their  enslavers at the time and lost . The Roman legions and Norman army were powerful oppressors. However much you want to change that you cannot.

98 Comments

  1. Mark B
    January 10, 2024

    Good morning.

    Quite right, Sir John.

    Alas we have a Foreign Secretary that seems to be happy to work not just with foreigners, but for them. Anyone trying on the reparations trick would have received short shrift from me and reminded of some very harsh home truths. One of which would be that it was other Africans’ that sold them to Europeans (and Arabs) in the first place. And I could go on.

    And what about child slave labour in the UK ? Sending children up chimneys was seen for the time norm but who would allow such today ? No one thank heavens, but few of us would be demanding that an ancestor of theirs who suffered such should now be compensated.

    What about all us Anglo Saxons ? Our lands were taken from us by force by the Normans ? The descendants of which still own vast estates today. The State should demand these lands as theft from the people and reclaim them.

    And finally. What about the Vikings or men from the north ? We had to pay them what has now become known as, Danegeld. The monies were obtained through threats of violence, a crime in anyone’s time frame. I think the governments of Denmark and Norway should pay us back, plus interest.

    Of course none of this will or should happen. Time passes and we move on. And that is what we should be telling these Grifters – Move on or, to put it another way, ‘Sling ya hook !’

    1. PeteB
      January 10, 2024

      Mark, Sir John, agree with both your comments. They echo ones I have made for some time.

      We can take a step further too. In the words of Monty Python “What have the Romans ever done for us?”. The groups that enslaved UK people generally left our country and people with some longer term benefits. The UK, through the industrial revolution and the empire helped spread wealth and technological developments world wide. Should the UK get compensation for that? Of course not – the argument is as daft as that for slavery repatriations.

      1. Original Richard
        January 10, 2024

        PeteB : “The UK, through the industrial revolution and the empire helped spread wealth and technological developments world wide.”

        That’s not how our Establishment see it. Their version is described by PM Johnson’s speech at the UN 22/09/2021 where he said :

        “We started this industrial revolution in Britain: we were the first to send the great puffs of acrid smoke to the heavens on a scale to derange the natural order.”

        The CEN group of Conservative MPs believe we must atone for this planet destroying error by enforcing upon us their unilateral economy destroying Gosplans called the Net Zero Strategy.

        1. Hope
          January 10, 2024

          That is after he had a mind changing epiphany. Read his DT articles before he met his wife and her mate Goldsmith- the one he made a Lord without much good reason other than to get him in his cabinet as environment guru. Fickle springs to mind.

    2. Everhopeful
      January 10, 2024

      I don’t think we are all that far off such cruelty.
      Look at what they did to children during the plandemic.
      And thanks to so many frighteningly out of control situations ( possibly related to abduction and enslavement) children now have little freedom.
      Many are also caught up in the servitude of psycho babble which redefines naughtiness and condemns a child to a lifetime of otherness and drugs.
      All brought to us by governments.
      And their utter stupidity.

      1. Hope
        January 10, 2024

        Cameron lauded being under EU law from EU courts a few weeks ago in the Lords! You know, the personwho gave apocalyptic warnings to leave EU, rigged referendum with tax payers cash, falsely claimed he changed EU and ran off when like a rich spoiled child when he lost. Now appointed to be in charge of EU slavery vassal state policy to ensure no divergence and act in lockstep.

    3. Narrow Shoulders
      January 10, 2024

      Plus our current slavery to the EU and the tribute we continue to pay.

      The past is the past and should stay there but we can put our present right.

      1. Hope
        January 10, 2024

        N.Ireland a vassal state! Brought to you by JRs party who promised the exact opposite to leave as one nation. Not give away N.Ireland and force a border down Irish Sea where foreigners checks goods movement for one part of our country to another! Nor should our country be forced to act in lockstep to a foreign body, be under laws from a foreign power, foreign court and be fined for not complying! Given a 85 seat majority to leave EU and did the exact opposite. All remainers in key ministerial positions out voting a token few leavers! Treacherous and traitors to their own mandate.

    4. graham1946
      January 10, 2024

      Not forgetting the Barbary Corsairs who enslaved over a million white people from Europe, (even raiding coastal areas of Cornwall) and sold them in Africa. Not much mention of this of course, only black slavery is worthy of mention.

    5. MFD
      January 10, 2024

      My sentiments entirely. When will elect someone with the strength to tell these foreigners to push off to some other shore.
      We have two Royal Marine landing craft ships which can dock boats. They should be stationed month about just on the French waters line!
      Marines should escort the rubber boats into the ship and the migrants sorted , those with ID and those without.
      Those without can then be put into a landing craft and shipped back to the French coast and driven out of the craft with cattle prods!
      This leaves those few left to be investigated for their right to be accepted – all done daily with no backlog.
      We must protect our own population. Most of corruption comes in on those boats, they must be kept out of our waters and never ste foot on land.
      I connot see any need for the nonsense the politicians are cooking up. We are entitled to protect our shores – just like Aussies did!

  2. Wanderer
    January 10, 2024

    Good points, well put, but have I missed something in the news. Is there suddenly a serious push for “reparations” in the UK?

    If someone wants to give their own money to others out of a misplaced feeling of guilt or to virtue-signal then let them. But not taxpayers’money, thank you very much.

  3. Michelle
    January 10, 2024

    The rise in modern day slavery here is all down to the ease with which people can come and go.
    I read various reports dating back to the 1960’s regarding people smuggling, and a route uncovered via India. The numbers were very small almost quaint by today’s comparisons.
    However, it did seem as if all concerned were taking it seriously, unlike today.

    I read yesterday of an Albanian drug dealer’s successful appeal against deportation. He claims he was trafficked here at the age of 13 and has now forgotten the language or some such rot. Despite evidence to show this as silly, the ‘human rights’ card wins the day and he gets to stay. This isn’t the first of such cases either.
    What I want to know is when will the host nations people have their human rights acknowledged?.
    To live in relative safety without the world’s criminals seeing it as a soft landing.

    1. Berkshire Alan
      January 10, 2024

      Michelle
      Agreed the more legal people you allow in without a specific job, and the more who are allowed to stay who entered illegally, the bigger the problem. These people are indebted to the people traffickers for years if not permanently, are often abused by their masters, to whom they owe thousands of Pounds when often working illegally in the alternative economy without paying tax or national Insurance and living in crowded unfit housing.

      1. Hope
        January 10, 2024

        Cockle pickers at Morecombe Bay spring to mind. Another imported problem. How about factory workers in Leicester? Do not forget there was and is a lot of MPs who have cheap overseas nannies, cleaners etc. Is this not a causal factor for the mass low paid immigration by the Tories? Johnson made nannies exempt for covid, was that based on personal circumstance or nation need? Was cheap overseas labour not a reason why Harper had to go previously?

    2. glen cullen
      January 10, 2024

      Agree – If we can’t return a known and convicted Albanian drug dealer …..who can we return

    3. MFD
      January 10, 2024

      Now lets see Sunak answer that plain , sensible question from Michelle , Sir John!

  4. DOM
    January 10, 2024

    ‘Parents Who Refuse Children Gender Change Face Seven Years in Jail in Scotland’

    I cannot believe our nation has come to this. Labour and the SNP are pure evil and I mean that in all sincerity. THEY ARE DANGEROUS

    The Tories have sold us down the progressive river for an easy life but they can redeem themselves by declaring war on woke fascism

    1. iain gill
      January 10, 2024

      Well, we have children’s mental health services in major towns and cities staffed predominately by trainees. Often led by nurses who are not even mental health nurses, when the norm was always that such services would be led by Psychiatrists or psychologists, that norm has been dumbed down to nurse level of qualification, and not even specialist mental health nurses.
      Most of the practitioners used to be properly trained (4 years plus training) mental health nurses, with further advanced qualifications in approaches such as CBT. That has changed so that now most of the practitioners are “mental health and wellbeing practitioners” (10 months training), and half the workers doing front line work are only trainees too not even fully qualified. These people are being allowed to mess with the minds of our most vulnerable people. They are being allowed to diagnose and assess conditions when they are simply not qualified to diagnose large undifferentiated populations of patients, and so many patients will be given the wrong guidance and care.
      In the same way that we are replacing GP’s with PA’s, paramedics, and nurses we are replacing specialist nurses with people with far less training.
      We have PA’s (one year of training) doing things like prostate biopsies, while doctors with 8 years plus of training are not getting slots on urology experience. And the same is happening with mental health services, far lower qualified people are being used to dumb down the service as they are more compliant, cheaper, easier to replace, etc. It’s political engineering of healthcare, not driven by peer reviewed ways of improving results, but by a desire to increase transactions and throughput.
      The widespread political wokeness they all display frightens the majority of their patients who want politically neutral healthcare.
      Failure to measure on successful outcomes and results makes all of this possible. Zero consequences for execs who introduce poor ways of doing things makes is all a mess of political fashions in what should be a carefully analysed scientific approach.
      The original medical head of the Tavistock clinic doing the gender reassignment surgery resigned because he says far too many of the patients came back years later regretting the surgery. He has gone public on all this. Yet we carry on. But its just one symptom of a wider service that is dumbed down and blowing in the wind of political fashions. The children with other mental health issues are getting equally disastrous care.

    2. Narrow Shoulders
      January 10, 2024

      Genital mutilation used to be frowned upon. Or was that only when practiced by slaves?

    3. a-tracy
      January 10, 2024

      Do they want parents to be guardians until they are 18 or not? What will happen? Will these children just be taken into state-controlled boarding schools? Is the SNP setting those up in advance?

      1. iain gill
        January 10, 2024

        the Ashya King case in healthcare, and other cases in education, demonstrate that the public sector and the state thinks it owns children, and knows whats best in a whole range of circumstances. When in reality it is only decent parents holding things together, the state is the worst parent of all, and you only have to look at what the children in care suffer to understand that. The way the courts work in cases involving decisions about children is massively broken too, and it is only the secrecy which they are allowed to get away with that hides the scale of the failures of the justice system. The cases of parents being threatened with arrest when they were going to take their children away from, what are now proven to be, gang rapists, by the police also shows that the front line of justice makes lots of bad decisions.

    4. glen cullen
      January 10, 2024

      Either we’re one single country, the UK (same laws one government), or we’re four separate countries 
.devolution doesn’t work, half measures never works

  5. Iain gill
    January 10, 2024

    Plenty of very dodgy goings on facilitated by the legal immigration route. One of the big advantages of intra company transfer visas to the big outsourcers who bring most people here on them… Is that the workers are then tied to that one employer. If they leave that employer they instantly lose the right to be in this country at all. They maybe part way through some medical treatment on the NHS, or their kids may be in an exam year at school, they are stuck they simply cannot resign. Which allows the employers to abuse them in multiple ways. many schemes of indentured servitude are there for all to see.

    1. Narrow Shoulders
      January 10, 2024

      I am in favour of visas coming with restrictions.

      1. iain gill
        January 10, 2024

        I agree, but the many and varied abuses by the employers in these circumstances need stamping out. Indeed they should not be getting so many visas in generic skills already in oversupply.

    2. Nigl
      January 10, 2024

      Yes and it serves Ministers purpose to ignore/be ignorant of the indentured servitude which is no more than ‘legal’ slavery.

      It also highlights the egregious double standards being pushed by the Left and allowed to continue by politicians with the cojones of butter.

      The slave trade was prominent in Africa well before it went ‘international’ predominantly to the plantations and when that trade was closed down after the lead from the U.K. (note we are never given credit for it and our politicians dont push back) it reverted to its African roots (their plantations) for economic reasons.

      And in other news after 20 years of ignoring the problem government is trying to give the impression it is on the small post offices owners by bursting into action, shamed by a t.v programme. We now read, surprise surprise, that all the BS about dealing with quickly is now precisely that, BS as they think some might actually be guilty, despite having the best brains in the country to interrogate the system.

      Note that Sunak etc has not said Ed Davey should lose his K, let’s leave a non politico as the whipping girl. This is the same person who as a Minister blatantly ignoring the plight of the wronged and alleged in the DT went on to work for the lawyers who prosecuted on behalf of the PO as political adviser at a vast fee. Venells was given her CBE when the issue was known about for 15+ years.

      Reply Davey has said he did not provide advice on PO matters to the law firm.

      1. iain gill
        January 10, 2024

        Most MP’s will have had representations from post masters who were abused by the post office and Fujitsu, and the failure of the courts to do justice. the political system has failed, because collectively all those MP’s failed to do anything, no doubt they will have written to the minister, and got a bland reply, but they didnt go beyond that and speak to each other and spot trends etc. so its a failure of the political democratic process, and its not the only one.
        more telling is that we have vast sums of money spent on the FCA which is supposed to regulate and monitor financial businesses, but here we have a massive fraud, false accounting, perjury, etc going on under their very noses and they have been asleep at the wheel, and dont seem to be feeling any heat from the consequences.
        it also exposes a massive problem that the senior layers of the British ruling classes are simply incapable of running, governing, monitoring big IT and business change programmes, they dont have the skills to do it, they dont know what “good” looks like, they are constantly bombarded with advice from supposed experts who are proven failures, and project after project fails and nothing is ever done to fix the broken way such large projects are procured, peer reviewed, risk assessed, trouble shooted once problems are shown, governed, etc and the approach of using large outsourced IT and public sector outsourcing vendors is also broken, its full of old boys net nonsense, people who went to the same schools, or served in the same regiments, helping each other with various levels of corruption built in.
        It all needs fixing, but I dont see any self awareness at senior levels, or will to do anything to improve things.

    3. Dave Andrews
      January 10, 2024

      The argument for mass immigration is that we have a shortage in low skill occupations like fruit picking, care homes and hotel staff.
      If those coming here for those jobs promptly get a better one (who wouldn’t?), then the skill shortages remain, and it rather undermines that argument for mass immigration. Given we have hundreds of thousands coming into this country each year and the skill shortages remain, I guess this is what has happened.

    4. Michelle
      January 10, 2024

      Those coming here on company transfer visas should surely know the rules before they come.
      I see no reason why they should use employment with one company as a springboard to get here and then be free to stay.

      1. Iain gill
        January 11, 2024

        But they do routinely

  6. Everhopeful
    January 10, 2024

    Quite right I suppose.
    Nothing to be done about it.
    Why though are we being forced to live our lives in the future ( save the planet) and in the past ( pay for thing we can have no understanding of).
    Do we have no present? Seems not.
    But I believe VAST sums of reparation are being demanded of us, stretching into the distant future?
    Which are being acceded to.

    Let’s put in our own invoices?
    Include the enslaving and forcing of men to go to war for no good reason except the profit of others?

    1. glen cullen
      January 10, 2024

      +many

    2. Mark B
      January 10, 2024

      Reparations is the next big money scam.

      Mark my words.

  7. Cliff..Wokingham.
    January 10, 2024

    I want compensation from women for getting man kicked out of the Garden of Eden. A few million pounds should do it.

    1. Michelle
      January 10, 2024

      Ooh be careful, you’ll be labelled a dangerous misogynist.
      Personally as a woman I thought that quite a humorous and clever quip, but then I like to think I’m not so fragile as today’s allegedly tough, striving women, sticking it to the Patriarchy!!

  8. agricola
    January 10, 2024

    An honest history lesson, the consequences of which we can do nothing about, nor should we try, beyond learning that it is dehumanising.
    Modern twists on slavery we import with some immigrants and visitors, but we now have the law to deal with it, so use it. Be it people trafficking for prostitution, workers for the drug trade or a combination of both as in the exploitation of young women within the immigrant population, deal with it. Chief Constables and social workers who turn a blind eye for fear of the accusation of racism should be dismissed and replaced with those who feel as abhorent as the majority of us. To politicians I would say, you have the power, stop importing the problem. To those that think this suggestion in itself is racist, I would point out that we did not have the problem we have now at the time of my youth. Consider what has happened since the 1950s.

  9. Philip P.
    January 10, 2024

    SJR: I think you will find the Normans did not practise slavery, they ended the slavery practised by the Anglo-Saxons. It had died out by the early 12th century.

    Reply Normans called it serfdom

    1. forthurst
      January 10, 2024

      Its all in the Doomsday book. Ten percent were slaves who could be traded. Three quarters of the population were unfree and were required to toil for their Lord of the Manor.

      1. Philip P.
        January 10, 2024

        Domesday book is dated 1086. By the early 12th century the practice of buying and selling people, and of slave-raiding in wars, had died out in England. We would nowadays find the existence of medieval serfs slavery but at the time people saw a difference.

  10. Sakara Gold
    January 10, 2024

    Gig workers, takeaway food deliverers, fruit pickers, parcel deliverers etc are effectively modern slaves. As with the Romans and Normans, society accepts this form of slavery because it’s profitable

    1. formula57
      January 10, 2024

      @ Sakara Gold – all forms of slavery are profitable so profit is not the reason for accepting the activities you characterize as slavery.

    2. IanT
      January 10, 2024

      Some well be abusedc SG – but it also may be very useful option to others. However, I would certainly move to close loopholes in the food delivery business, whereby people can ‘delegate’ thier jobs…

    3. agricola
      January 10, 2024

      Sakara, real life slaves have no choice. They are coersed through drug or alcohol addiction to do whatever is asked of them to obtain their next fix. They are also brought to this country by visitors who have some hold over them in their mother country, possibly sold into slavery.
      The workers in the UK you allude to are merely at the bottom of the permitted pay scale. They do what they do voluntarily and can walk away at any time. Who knows where indulging in the work ethic may lead. They should be admired for their choice as opposed to those who choose benefits as a way of life. A suggestion, let us consider a start in working life apprentiships in which we build in training that would allow the low pay scale worker to aspire and move to something better. We all started from zero at one point in our lives.6

    4. James B
      January 10, 2024

      Fake ‘self-employment’ abounds. A few huge parcel delivery companies seem to want to improve the bottom line at the expense of people who even deliver parcels to my house in their own vans. They are declared ‘self-employed’ so have to insure, fuel, maintain, tax, etc the vehicle.

      Then take the many drivers who are called ‘self-employed’ – ha ha – but drive HGVs labelled with the name of a large company, e.g. to name but one ‘Tarmac’ (others I’m sure exist). Such drivers it seems to me are surely in a ‘contract of service’ and deserve employment rights.

      1. iain gill
        January 10, 2024

        Those running this country in the public sector and politics dont understand freelancing, they dont understand the gig economy, they dont understand how it really works on the coal face on our largest programmes of work. You only have to look at IR35 to know that none of them have the faintest idea what they are trying to achieve. They are critical of all modes of employment but PAYE, they hate umbrella companies, they hate personal service companies, they hate sole traders, and yet they give massive tax advantages to the big consultancies and outsourcing vendors to abuse the market.
        The competition between 2 of the big parcel delivery companies, in the USA and elsewhere, is a well know MBA study subject. Where one chooses to have employee drivers, with certain protections and benefits, and the other chooses to use freelance drivers who are subject to a whole other set of market forces. Its interesting how this evolves, what the drivers think of it, which produces the most “happiness” amongst various workers, and how successful those companies are over time. One thing is for sure those parcels companies understand the full multi dimensional problem far more than politicians and the public sector mandarins regulating things do.
        And a bland “they should all be employees” is the wrong answer, it is simply incapable of producing the things the economy needs, or the workers need.

    5. Sam
      January 10, 2024

      Would you ban them from working in these jobs SG?
      You have a strange definition of slavery.
      PS
      Profitable for whom?

    6. Mark B
      January 10, 2024

      Diggin holes in the Congo to extract ores to make EV car batteries and using children is slavery. But hey, I bet you never stop to think about that ?

  11. Javelin
    January 10, 2024

    I’ve been surprised many times over the past few months about people I know who all live in £1M+ houses in Surrey expressing very negative opinions on the Conservatives as well as Labour, LibDems and Greens.

    These people are all natural Conservative voters who I have never heard make a political comments in decades. Yet they are all fed up with everything from mass migration, vaccine injuries, high taxes, unaffordable housing etc. The list of rants go on and on and on. Far worse than anything they have said in the past 30 years.

    If their attitude is reflected across the country the Conservative Party faces an existential crisis.

    1. Timaction
      January 10, 2024

      Its reflected across the Country as the Tory Party is no longer conservative. The one Nation liberals outnumber the few real conservatives and we all know it and see it in all of their policies and actions, not WORDS.

    2. Lynn Atkinson
      January 10, 2024

      Yes I concur. Everyone I know is seriously annoyed. It’s because there is not even a semblance of a Conservative Party any longer. A few good MPs, you see them on the Horizon, Brexit, Covid issues. Once it would have been the whole bench!
      My Tory MP is now promoting euthanasia! As if the feral State did not wield enough power.
      Good if Reform could displace the Lib Dem’s as the ‘dustbin’ vote but we need a Conservative Party and don’t have one.

  12. Everhopeful
    January 10, 2024

    Speaking of slavery
I see that there are calls to MASK us again.
    No!

    1. graham1946
      January 10, 2024

      Yep, I recently attended my GP practice for an injection given by a nurse and was made to wear a mask before being seen. SARS is back I was told. It has started.

      1. glen cullen
        January 11, 2024

        GPs van enforce their own policies ….they’re a private business

  13. Narrow Shoulders
    January 10, 2024

    Modern slavery is a term like relative poverty which has been weaponised by campaigners.

    Those people who you describe in your article have mostly surrendered voluntarily, thinking that where they are being taken to have streets paved with gold. They did this to themselves.

    Education not asylum is (as ever) the key.

    1. glen cullen
      January 10, 2024

      ‘Education not asylum is (as ever) the key’ in old money foreign eduction was call ‘gun-boat diplomacy’

  14. Dave Andrews
    January 10, 2024

    I’ve heard that in some countries a man’s debts are inherited by his children, with no hope of paying them off they live in virtual slavery.
    I think how wrong, but then I remember this is what the government of today is doing on a national scale – it’s called National Debt.

  15. DOM
    January 10, 2024

    The real question is why has the Tory party embraced and endorsed Neo-Marxism in all its forms?

    Woke, DEI poison is the cancer eating away at our human world

    Is John a Neo-Marxist? I don’t think he is. Maybe he should consider embracing Stalinist condemnation of his party’s leaders and their repulsive embraced of an ideology that is destroying our very being?

    1. Mark B
      January 10, 2024

      He who pays the Piper gets to call the tune. IMHO.

  16. Old Albion
    January 10, 2024

    It’s another weapon in the ‘great replacement’

  17. Lynn Atkinson
    January 10, 2024

    The disaster of slavery in our age is that the Government machine not only allows, enables but Co-operates with the illegal importation of slaves and then the ignores the daily evidence of slaves in our country refusing to intervene.
    The ‘slave owners’ have even enslaved our own children in places like Rotherham and Oxford etc.
    If people are upset by the Horizon scandal – imagine what a proper media presentation of that ongoing disaster would ignite. We might even get rid of all the illegal immigrants and many more. We might even have a chance of the British nation surviving.

  18. Iain Hunter
    January 10, 2024

    Hear, hear, Sir John. There must be no question of paying reparations. Why should the present day tax-payer pay anything to former colonies for claims related to slave plantations simply because people who looked like us once used the slave labour of people who looked like them? Above all, those of us descended from the agricultural peasantry, industrial working class and the nascent middle classes who never left these shores have ancestors who had nothing to do with it. That’s the overwhelming majority of the present-day native British population. It should also be made absolutely clear that the people who bought them for servitude did not enslave them. Other Africans and Arabs did that. Our forebears campaigned against it and the nation spent treasure and spilt its blood in suppressing the slave trade.

    It is worrying that some, up to and including the King, are takening the claims for slavery reparations seriously.

  19. Original Richard
    January 10, 2024

    Net Zero = slavery.

    Renewables will ensure energy is expensive and intermittent to impoverish us and when coupled with electrification will ensure complete control of when and what we can and cannot do all controlled at both the individual and population level with smart meters.

    All achieved by frightening the masses with a totally false claim that CO2 controls the planet’s temperature and increasing it from 3 molecules per 10,000 in the atmosphere to 5 molecules per 10,000 will cause the planet to burn or boil to destruction.

    1. glen cullen
      January 10, 2024

      Correct

  20. XY
    January 10, 2024

    Those who actually drive the talk about reparations etc are not driven a genuine belief – it’s important to see what this is really about…

    Like so much of the woke agenda, it’s not about any sense of justice, however warped, it’s yet another attempt to see monies flowing from rich countries (primarily those in “the West”) to the rest of the world. That’s the globalist agenda – enforced “equality”. Even if it’s equal poverty and at the mercy of autocratic, militaristic States.

    Some of those who foment such sentiments among our rather large modern-day quota of useful idiots include malign actors such as russia, who see that it sows discord in Western society which is one aspect of their hybrid warfare approach.

    All they need do is fund some rabid bunch of fruit cakes and put in place someone who gets them gluing themselves to various pieces of infrastructure and it gets attention in the media… then some of the inexperienced and intellectually less-than-gifted are persuaded, so they take up the cause in every day dialogue. Experienced people are too polite to say anything when they hear this nonsense in normal life. Before you know it some of the useful idiots are teaching it in schools… the snowball gains momentum…

    1. XY
      January 10, 2024

      First sentence should of course have read: “Those who actually drive the talk about reparations etc are not driven BY a genuine belief…”

    2. Hat man
      January 10, 2024

      Before we get on to Russia, XY, there are reportedly 150 MPs in the Conservative Party holding the views on climate you rightly condemn, and who are much more influential on this country’s policies than the Kremlin is. I think they might be the malign actors you seem to be looking for, rather bizarrely, over in Moscow.

  21. formula57
    January 10, 2024

    “These are the slaveries we can do something about” – well yes, but not if you are Home Secretary Patel or Home Secretary Braverman it was shown. Let us hope Mr. Cleverly has more success.

  22. Bloke
    January 10, 2024

    If Arthur mistreated George seven generations ago, why would Arthur’s present-day grandchildren be liable to compensate George’s?

  23. Mike Wilson
    January 10, 2024

    Make it illegal – with seriously draconian punishment – to employ anyone (privately or as a company) without a biometric identity card. That would stamp out a lot of it. And don’t give the biometric identity card contract to whoever wrote the Hirizon system.

    1. Iago
      January 10, 2024

      “I’m sorry, you can’t have your prescription without your biometric identity card, and you can’t have your biometric card unless you have been vaccinated. So, push off.”

  24. glen cullen
    January 10, 2024

    Under this Tory government I feel enslaved
    I can’t drive what I want (I must buy what my master says)
    I can’t travel where I want (without paying my master)
    I can’t heat my home with the equipment I want (I must buy what my master says)
    I have to give my master almost half of what I earn – company scrip
    My master nolonger protects my money, my religion, my customs, my traditions
    I have to buy the master licence for a box in my room with channels that I don’t want in fear of imprisonment
    My master will soon control everything via wifi on smart-meters, 15 min cities, electronic money …travel authorisation stamps next

    1. Mark B
      January 10, 2024

      And, thanks to all the laws they have past you cannot even say what you want even if it happens to be true.

  25. Jude
    January 10, 2024

    So, why does Westminster, the Monarchy & CoE support reparations for historic slavery. Surely any money available should be used to crush modern slavery. Including the huge trade in illegal migrant trafficking.

  26. Bert+Young
    January 10, 2024

    The present is conditioned by the past – an idiom that cannot be denied . The world is a different place for all sorts of reasons but one that still exists is the dictatorial nature of certain individuals who have and continue to create bedlam and hazard to others . The system of democracy ought to control this sort of problem providing it is often and seriously applied ; sadly this does not happen . The world is not a united place and probably never will be .

  27. Keith Collyer
    January 10, 2024

    If you are so against slavery I trust you oppose the government’s immoral removal of slavery protection for “illegal” immigrants.

  28. Ukretired123
    January 10, 2024

    “We don’t believe you” applies to many things these days from the Post Office scandal to the government on Brexit and taking back control of our country’s borders, law and order. With so many different cultures now in the country it is impossible to police what is going on, especially with the proliferation of drugs.

  29. Derek
    January 10, 2024

    Of course slavery is to be condemned but why should this country feel guilty about our past? We cannot be held accountable for the actions of our ancestors, but we can boast that it was OUR country which started the anti-slavery movement, which culminated in the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833.
    It seems that forms of slavery are evident in other parts of the world today, but not here. So why do the activists expect us to do more?
    If they are so determined to stop it, why do they not protest outside the Embassies of those who are suspected? Or go to the Capitals of those countries and voice their opinions to the leaders? Failure to do so tells us of their lack of sincerity. So what is their true objective?

  30. iain gill
    January 10, 2024

    Got a letter from the Labour party today.

    Massive union jack flag on it, very much in the style of the Thatcher led Conservative party.

    You have to admire their public relations.

  31. Ian B
    January 10, 2024

    Slavery. When the moment in time that happened that everyone goes on about, the average UK Citizen was also a slave to if not the same masters, it was those that saw themselves as a ‘class’ above and the same ‘ilk’. When those that feel aggrieved with their lot want compensation, they are saying those that were descendants of slaves in the UK are the ones that should pay.
    The other perspective is were did the slaves often talked about come from? All historical evidence is the white man (as they call him) would never advance into the African hinterland, for fear of disease. So instead, they were buying the slaves, not capturing them, from what was seen as a local authority at that time, that had captured murders, thieves and the enemy of the local tribes. If they weren’t sold as slaves, it was probable, they would have been executed. From that you suspect those wanting compensation wouldn’t be here today as their fore-fathers would not exist.
    We should never ever cancel our past as some virtue signalling would like to do, but by knowing about it we can learn, that’s the important bit learning. Teaching our children about the slave trade across the Atlantic, as it appears to happen now, in isolation, without encompassing all that went before is someone indoctrinating others in their own image – not teaching.

    1. Mitchel
      January 11, 2024

      “All historical evidence is the white man…would never advance into the African hinterland,for fear of disease.”

      What nonsense!Plenty of “intrepid” whites took the risk and ventured into the African interior in the name of “commerce,christianity,civilisation and conquest”.How do you think the whole of Africa(apart from the Orthodox Empire of Ethiopia,who saw off the Italians)got to be carved up towards the end of the 19th century?

      I strongly recommend Thomas Pakenham’s “Scramble for Africa”;around 30 years old but still the reference work.I bought a copy around ten years ago and only dipped into it a couple of times susequently but am now reading it cover to cover as there are very interesting things happening in Africa currently-and the historical context is important to understand what is going on.

  32. Javelin
    January 10, 2024

    Compo for any war too.

  33. Ian B
    January 10, 2024

    The amusing bit, in a sarcastic satirical way. When the Normans invaded the UK they enslaved the whole nation, the word slave was abandoned and renamed serfdom. One of the first things they did was start an audit trail to have a record of all the people and property they got to own – the Doomsday Book. Then as time went on, we got to have foisted on us the House of Lords, these are/were the Norman Lords the conquering masters, their name sakes are still there.
    It wouldn’t be a stetch to find that it was the descendants of these same people that had involvement in the Atlantic Slave trade. Follow the Royal African Company, back and you find their Norman lineage.

  34. Ian B
    January 10, 2024

    “No10 signals Post Office scandal campaigner could be in line for honour”

    Another lame ‘virtue signal’, from a lame weak amoral Government – there must be an election coming. No one honestly believes that is what ‘Alan Bates’ is about.
    How about real proper formal compensation not just paid by us the Taxpayer, but also paid directly by those in charge, having responsibility for the management of the UK and as such the Post Office. It won’t happen of course the Establishment’ will close ranks, look at the list Ed Davey, Paula Vennells, Adam Crozier, Gareth Jenkins, David Cameron right up to Rishi Sunak and many, many more all wanting and getting paid for responsibility and accountability then instead of taking the job seriously they looked the other way.
    We now cant even get to express our dissatisfaction at the Ballot Box, as the candidates that arrive on the ballot paper are chosen by the corrupt to keep the corruption going

    1. Ian B
      January 10, 2024

      There has to be a way that the many good people that enter politics for the right reasons with the intention to serve and be held to account to break free of the organizations that have them by the throat. We should no longer have these self-righteous, self-serving, egos seeking individuals clogging our UK Democracy.
      Is Davey, Starmer, Sunak an honest choice, when they are all cut from the same extreme left wing socialist cloth – they are as other have said the Uni-Party, anti UK, anti Democracy big State Monsters out to enslave a Nation for personal self-gratification.

      1. Ian B
        January 10, 2024

        There is some logic that if the turnout for the GE is less than 50% they should all walk away and never be seen again. With that as a Notion we could all abstain. Failing that all ballot papers should now have a None-Of-The-Above box/choice then the Political Party Organizers would stop insulting us.

        1. Peter Gardner
          January 10, 2024

          Something Brits have which Australians do not have is the right not to vote. ‘None of the above’ would be the best possible message to send to Westminster and Whitehall right now. Australians are legally prohibited from sending a similar message to Canberra.

    2. Mike Wilson
      January 10, 2024

      Vince Cable was business Secretary while it was going on. Interviewed on the radio the other day he was keen to blame the government before and the government after and said that as a minister he didn’t have the power to do anything about it. It was depressing and sickening to listen to.

  35. NickC
    January 10, 2024

    Well said, JR. And our civilisation is the first major one in the world not built on slavery. We use natural fuels – coal, oil and gas – to power our production of goods and food. So why is your government dismantling that infrastructure, without building a replacement first?

  36. Margaret
    January 10, 2024

    There are of course.

  37. Mike Wilson
    January 10, 2024

    The working class have been slaves since time immemorial – paying tithes and rents to their land owning masters. Even today the poorer members of the working class are trapped in lives of struggle and drudgery.

  38. Iago
    January 10, 2024

    And slaves have to keep their mouths shut. Take a look at the new team in charge of online safety at Ofcom. Enough to make you tremble to your toenails. Iron hearts as someone said.
    And the slaves have to eat, so in the West farmers are getting it long, good and hard.

  39. Geoffrey Berg
    January 10, 2024

    It is one of the great madnesses of the present age that people make claims for compensation based on the alleged slavery of their great, great grandfathers if not further back and even crazier some people and institutions have agreed to pay ‘compensation’ to people whose distant ancestors may have been slaves though of course the modern recipients never were slaves just because some people’s ancestors or institutions may have benefited ages ago from slavery. In sane and universal previous thought one cannot be criminally punished for what one’s great grandfather may have done but only for what you yourself did. Likewise one cannot be compensated for what one’s great grandfather may have suffered but only for what you yourself have personally suffered. To say otherwise is bonkers. Much modern political ‘thought’ (especially on the ‘political left’ but regrettably not exclusively on the left) claims otherwise. Much modern political ‘thought’ or fashion (not to dignify it with the word ‘thought’) is plain bonkers.

  40. Peter Gardner
    January 10, 2024

    While we’re at it let’s not forget the Viking slave trade of the tenth century – white Brits were traded as slaves in Egypt, Byzantium, Arabia. It has been esimated that as much as 10 percent of the population of Viking-era Scandinavia comprised slaves, or ‘thralls’ in Old Norse. The Arabs have a very long tradition of slavery and it is incorprated into Islam. Roger Scruton wrote about Islamic enslavement of white British girls in his factually based novel, entitled, if Memory serves, The Disappeared.

  41. Mickey Taking
    January 10, 2024

    and the latest time-travel …..
    The Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle accidentally called the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer “Prime Minister” during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday 10 January 2024.

  42. Ed M
    January 10, 2024

    If only we’d followed Christianity more in the past, we’d have had an even greater culture / civilisation, with even more brilliant art and music and universities and science, a richer and more diverse and stable economy – and without the shame of slavery.

    We squabble over a nugget of gold. But there’s enough gold in the universe equal to the weight of 14 galaxies! There is no limit to God’s abundance. It’s a question of trusting in him – as William Wilberforce did, bringing an end to slavery after so long.

    For God, country and king

  43. glen cullen
    January 10, 2024

    Just watching the Preston show on ITV with Chris Skidmore MP 
and wondering if his net-zero view are just a reflection of all Tory MPs 
.he’s been a Tory MP for a while in positions of high office & responsibility

    Reply Of course not. He does not speak for me and has resigned as a Tory MP because he disagrees with us over net zero policy.

    1. glen cullen
      January 11, 2024

      Reply
      SirJ, I would never include you in my grouping of ”Tory MPs”, I hold you in high regard as a genuine conservative MP …one of the few

  44. Bloke
    January 11, 2024

    Some descendants of American slaves claim their lives have been transformed to a much higher standard than would have prevailed had they been left in Africa. The earlier suffering has been immense, yet in several ways people have become kinder to others as fellow citizens.

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