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The show, which in its first five seasons starred the six actors who went on to make Ghosts , has engaged children and adults alike with a dry wit that owes much to Blackadder. Go and have children just so you have an excuse to watch it. The idea that Britain was multicultural in any meaningful sense before even the twentieth century stretches the definition of that word. This is especially true with the rewriting of British history as multicultural, a trend that began in the late s but has accelerated in the past decade. The song, about the history of black people in Britain, features lines such as:. But the attempt to cast British history as multicultural is something quantitatively different. To start at the beginning, Cheddar Man, the oldest intact skeleton in the British Isles, belonged to a group called the Western European Hunter Gatherers, the earliest inhabitants of this island after the Ice Age retreated. Although contested, it is entirely possible that these ancient Britons had dark skin, although the implications of this are not as progressive as you might think. His people were largely replaced by Mediterranean farmers about 6, years ago , who in turn were conquered by the Beaker People of Stonehenge fame two millennia later. For both the hunter gatherers and the farmers, judging by the scarcity of their DNA in the subsequent population, these migrations were probably extremely traumatic to the natives. At some point Celtic-speaking people arrived on the islands, although our understanding of when has recently been upended by new findings; it may have been the first millennium BC, or perhaps much earlier. But certainly they were the main inhabitants by the time Pytheas, a Greek sailor from Marseilles, first discovered this mysterious island in the fourth century BC. An inscription at Burgh by Sands near Carlisle also recalls a cohort from Mauri from modern-day Mauretania. Roman society, while brutal and dependent on slavery, offered extraordinary social and geographic mobility, and we know that Quintus Lollius Urbicus, governor of Britain in the mid-second century , had grown up in Tiddis, in modern-day Algeria, in a Berber family. Judging by the tombstone he had erected for his wife, he must have truly loved her. Among these migrants were people of black African origin. Yet that there were black soldiers in Britain, as well as North African and Near Eastern troops, is neither contested nor surprising. Empires are multicultural by nature. Roman Britain, compared to what came before and after, was diverse, but the scale of this diversity is of clear political interest in the 21st century, and so subject to exaggerations. In a response to the BBC song, historian and YouTuber Tom Rowsell points out that genetic studies of pre- and post-Roman Britain suggest that imperial occupation left little or no genetic contribution, something shown by at least two different studies. Rowsell makes the comparison with India, which the British ruled for two centuries without leaving any genetic trace. Perhaps, just as many Anglo-Indians left with retreating British forces, Romano-Britons of mixed heritage were most able and likely to flee when the province began to collapse into warlordism and invasion. The modern English population has a direct link with both the pre-Roman people living on this island, and with the Anglo-Saxons who followed; this is not true for modern-day migrant communities. Although schools across the country now teach otherwise, the idea that Britain was multicultural in any meaningful sense before even the twentieth century stretches the definition of that word to a point where only sophists will tread. History should not be all about kings and queens, dates and battles, but should look at how immigration is firmly entwined with any notion of what it is to be British. Until the mid-twentieth century the migrant population of Britain was small, and its non-European population miniscule. There have certainly been African populations since the sixteenth century, and even evidence of isolated African individuals in the medieval era. Around 10, Africans, mostly men, came to Britain during the era of Transatlantic slavery, but they left little in the way of descendants and a survey of Y chromosomes of 1, British men failed to find any of similar type to that most frequently found among African men. There were, of course, a number of significant figures of African or Asian descent long before the arrival of the Windrush. Britain had several MPs of black or partial black heritage, the oldest possible contender being James Townsend. Anglo-Indian David Ochterlony Dyce Sombre was elected to Parliament in , while there have been black footballers since the very start of the Football League. But before the war the non-white population of Britain was estimated to be in the low ten thousands, less than 0. This is certainly not the impression one would get from watching any BBC historical drama of the past five years. Who knew a high-speed rail network involved so many U-turns? Tune in tomorrow to find out what the latest line will be…. Radio 4 show In Our Time celebrates its landmark 1,th episode this week. Bragg tells the Times :. Something like that. It would be great if he was paid what I was paid. That would be fine. Which is perfectly all right. I just think this is an example of the way the BBC is in a fix. Mr S thinks Bragg might be on to something…. Britain is obsessed with schools and class. Bedales hit the headlines again this week because it is the first school in the country to ditch GCSEs — those entering now will take just two, in maths and English. The idea behind the present radical move takes the logic further: GCSEs, a relentless, gruelling cascade of grading rubrics and boxes to tick, are hardly considered the best for kids or their minds — by anyone. The logic here sounds good to me: the heavy-handed assessment of children in English schools is absolutely horrible and I thank my lucky stars I avoided most of it. I arrived in time for A-levels — in — having accepted a violin scholarship that made tuition fees manageable. I had decided to go to Bedales because my father had been in the s and had liked it. When I arrived, however, there was no sign of the Oxbridge tendency. I found myself in a sea of terrifyingly glamorous and sexually experienced teens who all promptly got on with the main business of the school: allocating power based on who fancied who. There were many binge drinking sessions in the fields, jaunts on Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons there was Saturday school into Petersfield for smoking, drinking, having curries and other mischief. Back at school at night, for those whose alcohol needs had not been met, there was a bar for sixth-formers open on Fridays and Saturdays. The school meant well. But while teachers were generally friendly, and some were very good, others were downright jokes and many seemed to struggle to be taken seriously. Teaching took place in sheds that were meant to be temporary when built decades earlier. By my second year of sixth form, I had realised something important. Unless you smoked and drank more than everyone else, that is. Which meant I had nothing else to occupy myself with but the education. The overnight bread baking! The sheep shearing! The art and design and theatre! I bread-baked once throughout the night. I had little contact with sheep. But thanks to teachers I liked in English and economics — and a genuine enjoyment of both subjects unlike French, my third A-level — I ended up working diligently. I came up with my own systems of revision on flash cards, and memorised past paper multiple choice questions of which some number would certainly appear on the exam and, to my great satisfaction, did. The more my peers had sex and got wasted and formed alliances of the cool, the fancied and the bad-ass, the more estranged from them I became, and the more time I spent revising in the beautiful Arts and Crafts library, or in my room Bedales mercifully offered Upper Sixth boarders private bedrooms. The real currency of success at Bedales, at least during my time, was being beautiful, self-assured and glamorous. The educational philosophy, indeed the education itself, was always secondary, if not tertiary. Bedales is a friendly, socially intoxicating environment, and that counts for a lot. The clock is ticking on a bill to ban conversion therapy, at least for this year. So why not unleash the full force of the law on those supposed conversion therapists intent on straightening out gay people and — perhaps more pertinently — trying to de-trans those who claim to have a gender identity different to their biological sex? Many abhorrent practices are already illegal. Electric shock treatments, while horrifying to read about , are a thing of the past. When Alan Turing was convicted of gross indecency, he chose chemical castration over imprisonment. But that was ; today we live in a rather different world where it is widely accepted that sexual orientation is immutable, and what goes on between consenting adults is their own business. If abusive practitioners are employing violent or coercive methods in , the existing law can deal with them. For these lobbyists, conversion therapy bans have become a rallying campaign, on a par perhaps with their calls for gender self-identification. That ludicrous idea, of gender self ID, at least, seems to have come off the rails now that even Keir Starmer has found the gumption to get down from the fence. Surely, its supporters say, if a bill protects only one person then it is worthwhile legislation? And even if nobody is ever prosecuted, the government has at least signalled its virtue? Such thinking, however, does not make for good law. If this bill is rushed through, there could be unintended consequences that could easily backfire. When even hapless First Minister Humza Yousaf puts on the brakes, this is surely a matter that should go no further on either side of the border. But to ban something, it needs to be defined. The Canadian definition is worth reflecting upon:. The prohibition here occurs in one direction only. Activists who seek to help children find their transgender identity have nothing to fear from the law in Canada. But a parent who puts their foot down and tells a child to wait until they know what it means to be an adult may run the risk of finding themselves in hot water. Despite apparently dressing as a man outside work — something Lemieux has denied — the teacher was backed by the school board. Perhaps, given the wide-ranging Canadian law, this is no great surprise. What is clear is that the Canadian conversion therapy legislation is an ass. We should learn from their error and avoid introducing anything similar on this side of the Atlantic. More than 11, migrants have landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa in the last week, an unprecedented influx that has exposed the deep divisions within the EU. More than , migrants have arrived illegally in Italy this year, numbers not seen since the great migrant crisis of Consequently, Germany is now refusing to accept any more migrants from Italy, and Belgium recently announced it will no longer accommodate single migrant men, a decision that has since been suspended following a legal challenge. That is a microcosm of the rancour within the 27 member states of the EU the bloc that Starmer wishes Britain was still part of. That may have been true a few years ago, in the summer of , when Macron appeared on the front cover of the Economist walking on water. He was showcased as the fresh and sophisticated face of centrist civility, the antidote to the populist abomination of Brexit and Trump. If Starmer seeks advice from Macron on how to govern then God help Britain. Poverty, violent crime and sexual assaults have rocketed in France in the last few years, as has illegal immigration and the cost of living. But Starmer is like every 21 st century left-wing leader: far more interested in the Progressives than in the Proletariat. Is Macron a Progressive? No one in France is quite sure. So what does he stand for? Six years on and the French are still none the wiser. They can keep each other company on the road to nowhere. It has emerged that First Minister Humza Yousaf appeared on the controversial channel twice in the past, first in and then again in , when he was transport minister, after the annexation of Crimea. Unfortunately for Yousaf, his predictions ended up falling more than a little short of the mark…. Not only did Yousaf get it wrong on independence, he also messed up his own numbers. How very embarrassing…. Mistakes aside, at least Yousaf enjoyed himself. But SNP politicians are no strangers to RT: former first minister Alex Salmond announced he would be hosting his own TV show on the channel after he stepped down as SNP leader in — only pulling the programme after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. Let it not be said that good judgement runs in the lifeblood of the Scottish Nationalist party…. I am not sure why. I guess the idea of all that pomp and dressing up, instead of just listening and enjoying the performance, felt a bit up itself and initially put me off. Plus, this performance was in English, and I always assumed Italian and German operas would flow more easily in song. It was, as it turned out, completely worth dusting off my black tie. It was an outstanding performance and an English aria is just as thrilling as any in Italian or German. The grand picnic on the grounds during the extra-long interval made the dress-up more fun. Plus, it is cheaper to travel to East Sussex than Europe. So, sorry, Glyndebourne, I got it wrong. As proven by the very first words of this diary piece, we Brits love to talk about the weather and when it rains, we love to complain about it even more. But you know what? I am starting to appreciate being soaked to the skin and I have two reasons why: Firstly, our house is remote and we have no mains water. So any drop of rain is always appreciated as it keeps our borehole well supplied. We might all find we love getting our brollies out in the UK even more as the climate continues to change and the non-rain-blessed have trouble providing drinking water and irrigation for their crops. Who knows, we might even start exporting it. The Rescue , all good books shops etc. I knew what it was while serving in the military: becoming a member of the SAS. Out of on my selection course who wanted to wear the sand-coloured beret, only eight passed. But what about since you have left, they asked. That was a hard one, not because there have been so many but because of my scattergun approach to writing, TV and film production. I have sold over 30 million books but still sign deals book-by-book. My publishers want to make our relationship more formal, but one at a time feels good to me. If only I had thought of it during the radio show. Another upside of the crazy weather this summer was that there have been some excellent waves. I entered my first competition in Costa Rica just before lockdown and got through to the third heat, only to be beaten by Zac, a year-old from the US West Coast, who annoyingly seemed to be glued onto his board. I used to make fun of friends whose surfing has become a religion but I now understand why. In Costa Rica, there is a way of life for surfers called Pura Vida. Even churches in surf towns get into it and have crucifixes made from surfboards fixed to their doors. In the second heat of the competition in Costa Rica, I caught a wave and then it was as if I was at one with Pura Vida. Everything was in perfect balance, I was in a state of flow. My perfect, soulful experience lasted less than a minute but felt like hours. Then the surf god let go of me and I wiped out spectacularly. I am off to Costa Rica next year to compete once again. Hinduism is diverse. Practices vary between communities. Sindhis do things differently to, say, Sikkimese. And they vary across different regions too. Sindhis in the Indian city of Pune, where my grandparents were from, do things differently from Sindhis in London, where my mum lives. Everyone knows the main rituals of a Hindu funeral: you feed cows each day before breakfast, you are expected to be, at least temporarily, a teetotal vegetarian, and the deceased is always cremated. The period of mourning can last anywhere between three to 12 days, garlic and onion may or may not eaten, some insist the cows must have a special diet and others that women must not attend the cremation. But only a priest knows exactly what to do. When my grandfather died, Nani my maternal grandmother hired a priest to lead the funeral and guide the family through several days of mourning. Priests in India are reticent to share exactly what their interpretation of the correct liturgy should be, lest families simply nab the format and shop around for other priests. They can also be rather unscrupulous when it comes to fees. As the priest led the rites, he calculated just how much he could squeeze out of the family. One of the rituals involved my Nani giving objects to the priest for my grandfather to take into the afterlife. As Nani offered up some sandals, the priest stopped her. And yet this year, when Nani realised she was dying, she asked for the same priest. As we planned her funeral, we learned that the priest was a crook; some friends told us he was known for emotionally blackmailing mourners and that he had been seen driving around in a Mercedes. Keen to avoid a repeat of last time, we asked the priest for the full price for everything. Someone had to rid us of this troublesome priest. The colonel, his wife and another, well-connected neighbour formed a makeshift junta with me, mum and my aunt. Legitimacy was the harder question: would Nani approve? After all, she asked for him. In our defence, Nani hated that the priest ripped her off 10 years ago. Also, that priest was just the first that happened to pop into her head as she slipped away. She had no affection for this swindling swami. As for logistics, finding a new priest at 9 p. Somehow, the pillar of the community neighbour sourced a Sindhi priest, who gave a transparent price and prepped us for the next 12 days. Miraculously, we even sourced all the materials for the funeral, including sandals. The funeral passed off almost without a hitch. I was wrong. I was invited to speak at a conference in Barcelona in the late s. At the end of a very long, hard day, my genial Spanish feminist hosts invited me to dinner, telling me they would meet me in the hotel lobby at I almost went into some sort of traumatic shock. I was aware of the Catalonian reputation for eating late — sometimes as late as midnight, at weekends — but I was having none of it. I bade my colleagues farewell and found myself a gorgeous little tapas bar that was open at 7. I ate bread with deep green olive oil, deep red tomato and roasted garlic, octopus salad with waxy potatoes, jamon croquettes, and a plate of marinated anchovies. As I sipped my ice-cold, bone-dry sherry I felt relieved to be alone. And the next morning, I was well-rested and free from indigestion. Lone dining was my newly discovered joy. I was hooked. Breakfast is thick yoghurt with floral-scented honey, eaten as we watch the clouds gather. For lunch, we might have a salad and a small slice of spanakopita, but for dinner, we go all out. At a local taverna, we choose an excellent bottle of Robola and dive into the daily specials. A great time is had as we chat away, laughing, re-telling stories of other holidays marred by bad weather. But on my return to London, once the post has been opened and the washing done I will be venturing out for a solo dinner. My holiday companion is my favourite person in the world, but eating out alone is one of my top de-stressers. When dining with others, I am perhaps uncharacteristically yielding. And, if no one else wants dessert and I do, I concede. Then there is the issue of eating and talking — two activities that are perhaps best not mixed, especially for those who seem incapable of chewing, swallowing, and then partaking in conversation. And I am never late for my evening with myself, unlike those friends notorious for leaving others sitting there, becoming hungry enough to eat the tablecloth, until they eventually rush in 30 minutes late, claiming that the Northern Line is down again. I think we both know the answer. Occasionally other diners have approached, asking if I would like to join them — their faces displaying the patronising sympathy that smug couples often excel at. When I mention my penchant for a table for one I am often quizzed as though I have professed a liking for Gary Glitter tribute bands. I assume these judgemental wazzocks would not raise an eyebrow if I said I liked visiting museums or the cinema alone. Nevertheless, I am clearly a trailblazer. I reckon any dining companion of this charmer will soon wish they had opted for a table for one. For the first time more than 10 per cent of the Japanese population are aged 80 or older, according to new official data. The ageing population percentage is a result of greater longevity coupled with a declining birthrate — marked the fewest births on record for the country. It is estimated that, at current rates, the Japanese population will decline by about 50 million from million to 75 million by As Elon Musk once observed, unless the population bomb is defused the Japanese may be extinct in a few centuries you can actually watch the Japanese population shrinking in real time here , if that floats your boat. The government has yet to respond to the figures but will no doubt point to the policies they have launched to arrest the ageing trend. So far we have been promised generous subsidies for child rearing and childcare, increased student loans, more flexible working patterns, greater paternity as well as maternity leave, and even free houses in the countryside, where space is plentiful. But nothing has worked; the pandas in Tokyo zoo have been more prolific than the average Japanese youth. There are many reasons for this but at the heart of the problem is the diminished options for young Japanese to find stable and secure employment. As a result, they find it hard to make themselves eligible or plan families even if they have the energy and will to do so. Many Japanese appear not to: last year, a poll by the government-affiliated National Institute of Population and Social Security reported an 8-fold rise for men and a three-fold rise for women who said they had no intention of getting married when compared to the same survey in Many, it seems, have simply given up. That leaves mass immigration as the only viable solution but one that no political party has shown any sign of embracing. There are upsides to living in a gerontocracy. The old and elderly are still deferred to here, treated with courtesy and assumed to be repositories of wisdom and humanity. And, encouragingly, old means something different here, starting at at least the current prime minister at 66 is considered jejune by many. There is more positivity about being old in Japan than anywhere else in the world. The elderly delight in doing un-elderly things and the media delight in reporting them. She has no plans to retire. There are so many positive stories about the elderly that some slip through the net. The country is shaped around the old with facilities built and maintained with an aged clientele in mind. That means standards of cleanliness and service are high. And there is far less impulse for constant change or tolerance for youthful revolutionary fervor Just Stop Oil protests would be unthinkable. There is less hysteria, more order, and such aspects of society that work perfectly well are left alone to continue to do so. All of this makes Japan a pretty comfortable place to live for those of mature years. Dark demographic clouds may be clearly visible on the horizon but at least for the time being, Japan is a country for old men, and old women. With the polls pointing to a Tory thrashing, how many of the Red Wallers will win their seats next time? She announced back in November that she was standing down from parliament and today she has also declared that she is quitting her post as a junior minister for Levelling Up. She now intends to focus her efforts on campaigning for one punch assault victims; her late father died after a single punch in a Sheffield pub. Davison wrote that:. Her replacement has already been announced: Jacob Young, also In , he became the first Tory MP to ever represent Redcar in , having previously been employed in the local chemical plant there. Out goes Davison, a committed Trussketeer, and in comes Young, a loyal Rishi man from the start. Was Liz Truss a fiscal hawk inside No. That is the rather startling claim made by the former prime minister, speaking today at the Institute for Government about the future of economic growth. It seems to be a direct rebuttal to the criticism , made frequently over the past year, that her agenda was one that would have made Gordon Brown blush. Do her claims have any merit? Independent forecasters suggest not. But that figure was produced just over a month after the forecaster was sidelined from the Truss mini-Budget. Moreover, there were no other spending cuts to point to in her mini-Budget. Her plans to usher in what was thought, by her own team, to easily be the single biggest handout in British history was not offset by any reduction in public spending. Indeed they are, largely by what is being implemented by the government. It was fairly obvious from the very start of the leadership race that Truss had virtually no interest in the spending side of the ledger. As ever with the short-lived Truss premiership, very little was known about spending cuts at the time, and what was known kept changing. The OBR should be there to present the entire spending plans in the round. This is a remarkable comparison: to equate temporary, emergency schemes to permanent changes to public spending. As it happens, her centrepiece policy — the Energy Price Guarantee — was actually forecast to be more than furlough by Truss and her team. By insisting some kind of unfair treatment on the part of the media and markets , Truss has inadvertently highlighted the extent to which her plan was to keep borrowing and spending. The defence of her mini-Budget directly contradicts her new insistence that the real goal was fiscal restraint. Her attempt to rewrite this part of the narrative is likely to find less sympathy, even amongst her supporters, as the evidence trail she left behind shows that, while the Truss administration was many things, fiscally prudent was not one of them. Still, her insistence that this was her intention is a worrying development. Truss has already given a terrible name to tax cuts; now she risks damaging the case for a more limited state. For months, the German government has been trying to devise a way to save its heavy industry from high energy prices which are sending production fleeing to Asia. Now, the government seems to have found a way. Instead, some of the money will be going towards subsidising cheaper energy for heavy users although householders may end up paying more. Needless to say, some of the subsidies will be disappearing into the pockets of the owners of coal-fired power stations — given that some of these have had to be fired up again to cope with the disappearance of Russian gas. At the same time, Germany is pushing back against EU proposals for new reporting requirements on climate and other environmental issues. It wants to change the rules so that they affect only companies employing more than people, rather than Given that you can make synthetic fuels to any recipe you like, this effectively means that the car industry will be able to continue making internal combustion engines pretty much as now. For years, Germany pursued a policy of relying on cheap Russian gas while hoping that some solution to the problem of intermittent renewables would magically appear. Now, the costs are becoming clearer. Wind and solar are not going to deliver sufficient energy that is cheap and reliable enough to replace all fossil fuels — at least not without some as-yet unclear technology to allow the affordable storage of vast quantities of energy. The inevitable result of trying to plough on with net zero will be yet more sections of German industry disappearing off to South Asia, which is unencumbered by legally-binding targets. The question is, which country will become the first to rat on its net zero target, to find some of putting it off, watering it down — or changing the definition of what counts? There must be a lot of money on it being Germany, although it may still take a few years before any government feels brave enough to admit the inevitable. Theresa May always had a camp appeal. The clumsiness, the dancing, the incredible squareness. Mrs Thatcher never took that crown — she had too much of a hard edge — though it was a surprise to me to discover that Australians and Americans saw only the hair and the handbags and made her that most tedious and reductive of things: a gay icon. But unlike Thatcher, May had a dissociation from reality not only about trivialities but also about the really important stuff. This naivety and dislocation would be quite funny in anyone but a former prime minister. And yet May is just the latest politician to rebrand their delusional ineptitude into loveable klutziness — with the aid of a willing public. All she needs is a podcast partner to complete her transformation. Bantering podcasts are now an essential part of public rehabilitation. Turns out that was all theatre. These newfound friendships have the same agreeable jolt as finding out that actors who play deadly enemies on screen are friends in real life. And yes, it is nice to see, like the cast taking a bow at the end of a panto. But this can tip over from agreeable forgiveness to amnesia. The perky teens who marched against the invasion of Iraq in are now in their late thirties and keen listeners of Alastair Campbell on The Rest is Politics. In this spirit of podcast reconciliation and rehabilitation, why stop there? How about The Rest is Tilling? Imagine the seamless sponsorship bumpers. The irony here is that actual major differences of character and opinion, debated through in long form, would be fascinating to hear. But soft centre mulch is where the form seems to be settling. He was the smartest finance official of his generation. He would bring global contacts and experience. When Mark Carney was appointed as the first foreigner to run the Bank of England he was meant to be a refreshing, technocratic figure who would blow some of the cobwebs off the institution. No former governor should ever be so openly partisan. Indeed, if anyone imposed Argentinian-style monetary policies it was possibly Carney himself. There was no mistaking the ferocity of the attack. The day before Liz Truss launched a defence of her premiership, Carney used the podium of the Global Progress Action Summit — hardly a neutral sounding event — to criticise her policies. Carney has now retired from the Bank and he is, of course, entitled to his view. There are, however, two problems with his intervention. The first is that it is unheard of for a former governor to be so openly partisan. Predecessors such as Mervyn King or Eddie George may have hinted at their views, but they never targeted an active political leader so directly. It would surely be better for Carney to maintain a dignified silence on British politics. The second problem is this. During his time in office, Carney took interest rates down to the lowest in three centuries, printed money on a vast scale, and allowed regulation to become so hopeless that pension funds could not survive a modest rise in gilt yields. Carney was a poor leader of the Bank. But in the years since, he has become a disgrace to the institution he once led — and with his attacks on British politicians he is simply embarrassing himself. One year on from the mini-Budget, Liz Truss arrived at the Institute for Government, flashing grins and firing off one-liners. And Truss certainly did not disappoint, giving both barrels to her myriad of critics. How about the OBR? It all kicked off on GB News this morning, following a joint Sunday Times and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into Russell Brand, in which the news outlets accuse Brand of rape and sexual assault Brand vehemently denies the allegations. On GB News we put free speech first — even when we disagree with each other. Now, for a change, a left-wing academic is feeling the heat. The allegation came after Bulstrode claimed in a paper that an English ironware maker, Henry Cort, stole his invention from slaves. Before conservatives engage in too much self-congratulation, however, they should stop and think carefully about whether this attack against Bulstrode is really something to celebrate. The gist of the piece is that Cort, an eighteenth-century ironmaster seen as pivotal to the Industrial Revolution because he developed a revolutionary and efficient means of turning scrap metal into pig-iron, had pilfered the whole idea. The technique, it was claimed, had been in earlier use in a Jamaican ironworks, and had been created and perfected by the slaves who worked in it. Dr Jenny Bulstrode claimed that an English ironware maker, Henry Cort, stole his invention from slaves. The Bulstrode thesis, if correct, is obviously very significant for our reading of imperial history. But is it right? Perhaps unusually, there has been some lusty pushback. The original article has been forcefully rubbished in another piece available here , and also excoriated by a senior Oxford historian, professor Lawrence Goldman. The matter has now, however, become public and personal. The journal is, we are told, doing its own investigation. Dr Bulstrode is, in short, in hot water. There can be no doubt where our sympathies should lie in this intellectual spat, and that is with Dr Bulstrode. This may sound odd, especially since very possibly indeed her critics are right and her ideas are ill-supported ideologically-tinted hogwash. Where they do so in good faith, and with closely argued reasoning, as Dr Bulstrode has done, any institution should think twice before intervening because someone else has disagreed forcibly or suggested that they have got things seriously wrong. The same goes for academic periodicals. Far from being a knock-out reason to prevent or penalise publication, it can often amount to a rather strong argument the other way. Intellectual life can be much enriched through suggestions that are, at least at present, impossible to support with irrefutable evidence and contain what looks like frankly outrageous speculation. There is a big danger in a safety-first intellectual atmosphere that demands meticulous support for every proposition advanced. The result is a dreary academic monoculture where academics play safe and only write pieces where there is no evidence-bucking or speculation that might put in doubt the all-important acceptance letter. Thirdly, if we want to preserve any serious academic freedom, accusations of academic misconduct also need keeping carefully in check, and reserving for the most serious cases of fraud. No-one here is alleging any academic dishonesty in the sense of deliberately misstating evidence, suppressing some vital finding or inventing facts that are not there. The complaint about the Cort piece, even if it is right, is essentially about reasoning, balance and the proper treatment of evidence the other way: in short, an allegation of too little evidence and too much speculation. That is not malpractice. There is nothing wrong with a certain amount of tendentiousness and even at times outrageous speculation in the academic humanities. The cure for it, if one thinks that an academic has got things entirely wrong or provided wholly inadequate support for a view, is another article saying just that. If you are a right-of-centre academic feeling a touch of schadenfreude here, tread carefully. Remember, however, that next week it might just be you. Khan has done a fantastic political job coupling the Ulez expansion to perceived improvements in air quality. I get that, it seems a no-brainer. Get polluting cars off the road and, hey presto, clean air! The trouble is the evidence on this is not as clear cut as Khan might like people to think. But what is already apparent is that the financial burden imposed on people and small businesses in outer London is significant. Khan, unfortunately, does not take kindly to be told as much: if you try to get into that kind of detail, the Mayor deploys avoidance tactics, his modus operandi being to start hurling insults. You get the drift. The Mayor has become a master at deploying such tactics during the monthly meeting with the London Assembly. Usually, it works well. Each political group is given a proportion of time relative to its number. The Conservative group has nine of the twenty-five Assembly members and so we get around 54 minutes, or only around six minutes each. This is less than ideal. It could be about the Met being in special measures, poor performance on housing delivery, Transport for London in desperate need of reform, the London Fire Brigade in special measures or, the cause celebre, the expansion of Ulez to outer London. As you sit, listening to the Mayor dodge your question and throw insults, you watch your time slip away. You plead with the chair to make Khan answer the question. Another thirty seconds gone. He wants you to waste your time complaining or returning insults. It takes all your energy to stay calm and use the time you have effectively. To get the answer your constituents deserve. If you push on regardless, staying polite but focused, he gets increasingly annoyed. We see the desperation to avoid proper scrutiny and the obfuscation. We see a Mayor who is increasingly panicked. A Mayor who is wildly unpopular in London and even more so in the Labour party. A Mayor who could lose London for Labour. AAPL

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Goenka the Teacher had reminded all the students that the Day 2 and Day 6 in our day course of Vipassana would be the most difficult. At least, I can say, the Day 2 was really the biggest torture. I came to the Vipassana meditation course with an expectation of finding salvation from my depression. I thought I would see a magic aura of enlightenment, or beautiful visions, or a surreal experience of ecstasy. This was just a boring process of sitting in total silence, with nothing to do but to observe breath for ten hours per day. The more I craved for a divine vision, the more I got restless. While I closed my eyes and seemed calm, my mind was not unlike an untamed wild horse which brought me galloping over series of memories and fears. Once I saw blurred pictures of places I have visited, changing rapidly as flash: mountains of Himalaya, deserts of Pakistan, jungles of Papua. Suddenly after those happy moments of reiterating my traveling years on the road, my mind threw me to sorrow: hospitals, graveyard, funeral house, dead bodies of my parents, dead body of myself. This is the most frightening part of meditation. We humans are afraid of boredom. Remember when you have nothing to do, you will always try to find something to fill up those moments of emptiness. You grab your mobile phone, you check the internet, you post status in Facebook, you refresh your Twitter, you meet friends, you read books, you eat, you shop, you sleep, you sex or you drink or you drug yourself,… you do anything to avoid being lonely, as lonely will bring you boredom. And we have expression for this: bored to death. The sentence has its logic: your fear of boredom is your fear of death. When you are bored, you experience a slice of death—being idle with nothing to do. And the meditation exactly throws you to this total idleness. Do I really care whether my breath comes from the left nostril or right nostril? My mind revolted, shouted that I was just wasting time. But, despite of that, nothing else I could do and nowhere I could escape to. I had no choice other than just continued sitting, closing eyes, facing my own self, and wishing the bell to ring sooner. The boredom is scary, because when you are bored you have nothing else to face but your own mind. And your mind is such an insane one, which in one moment brings you happiness and right after that it crushes you into misery. It sometimes brings you hope, but suddenly punches you with despair and fear. What a dangerous mind! While I was meditating, I had been blown away by my mind several times. Sometimes I smiled, sometimes tear flowed uncontrollably through my cheeks, sometimes I was sure I would be able to finish this seemingly never-ending Day 2, sometimes I was thinking of the possible ways to escape from this prison of mental tortures and back to my happy life inside Jakarta apartment blocks. But most of the time I was sleeping. Most of the time I was being mindless. The Teacher, through the discourse at the end of Day 2, explained that meditation is kind of a mind surgery. The mind knows we are trying to tame it remember how Pi tamed the wild tiger in the Life of Pi? To be master of mind is to change the habit thinking pattern from mindlessness to mindfulness. For this purpose, one needs to follow three steps: sila morality , samadhi concentration , and panna wisdom. The strict rules inside the monastic meditation camp force us to follow the silas definitively. What a perfect environment to purify your behavior. Then comes the samadhi , the meditation, the process of mastering the mind. In Day 3, the students were asked to observe any sensation around the nose and area between the nose and the lips, while breathing. What sensation? I felt certain vibration, flowing around my nose. Is this the sensation? Just observe. Then, again, my mind blew me away. I saw a vision. Of a dark face, with hollow black empty eyes, with a slightly open mouth like screaming unspeakable pains. It looked like the face of a suffering imprisoned soul. But who is this little soul? I concentrated on my breath and the sensation around my nose. The more I concentrated, the stronger the picture of that scary face drawn in my sight. Now I could feel the soul. The eyes of that face were juxtaposed exactly on my eyes. The nose of the face was on my nose. The mouth was on my mouth. I felt goosebumps all over me. Is the imprisoned soul me? I started to appreciate this Silence, as it brought me freedom rather than imprisonment. I felt so much invigorated by the vision. I really wanted immediately to share this magical experience to anybody. But, alas, we are not allowed to talk at all except to the American lady the meditation teacher in our room. I was so excited when it came to my turn in the session of private interview after lunch. The teacher did not have so much time to listen to my rants. It was mentioned already, that the Day 2 and Day 6 would be the most difficult. So far we have practiced Anapana technique of meditation, that is pure observation to breath. In Day 4 afternoon, we technically just started the Vipassana. The reason why we had to learn putting attention to sensations around small area around the nose, is that to practice our subconscious mind to be sensitive to these subtle sensations. When we have a certain of mastery, we would be able to feel sensations all over the body. The two hours Vipassana teaching in Day 4 was the most magical moment in my life. Through the broadcast audio, Goenka commanded the students to put more attention to sensations between the nose and upper lips, then redirect the attention from that area to the top of the head. This was the first time in my life, I felt the top of my head. There is a small hole on top of our skull—the hole as big as a nut left open after the solidification of skull covering our brain, of which process started since our baby time. I never knew there was such hole existed. But now, by closing up eyes and without even touching it, I really felt the little hole. It was vibrating. Any my skull was vibrating. Every part of my face was vibrating, including my eyes and my tongue. The whole body was vibrating, tingling, flowing. The body, which I have carried during my 33 years, for the first time became sensible to me. I was being reintroduced to my own body; and it turned to be the first time in my life I became really curious about my own body. Curious of my own reality. During the meditation, Goenka kept repeating the Sanskrit keyword: Anicca. The vibration we felt on our body was the proof that our physical body is changing, moment to moment. Every moment it decays, every moment we are one step closer to death. Anicca is the Buddhist understanding of Law of Impermanence. Nothing is permanent, everything is changing and by the time will disappear. Just like the physical body, our sensation is also bound by the Law of Impermanence. All sensations arise then disappear, arise then disappear. All pleasant sensations like the flowing and liberating subtle vibrations and all unpleasant sensations like the pain and numbness after long sitting are bond to Law of Impermanence—it all will arise then disappear, arise then disappear. Meditation is to train our subconscious mind to deal with these sensations. We are used to react to any sensations, and now we train our mind not to do anything but observing. As every sensation is not permanent, why we develop attachment towards those which bring pleasant sensation? And why we have to develop hatred towards those which bring unpleasant sensation? The craving of pleasant sensation and the aversion towards unpleasant sensation are the source of our misery. All of the sensations, no matter it was pleasant or unpleasant, will bring misery. It is not hard to understand unpleasant thing will bring misery. When you develop hate towards the things or people you dislike, the bigger your hatred, the bigger your misery will be. But how about pleasant sensations? Having money is nice, but you see many rich people are unhappy in their never ending greediness to earn more money. Being famous is nice, but you see many famous people are actually in misery in obsession of seeking greater and greater attention. Sex may bring you certain pleasant feeling, but being obsessed by it will give you more despair and depression. The more you are attached to anything, the more miserable you will be. In his discourse, Goenka gave an example about losing watch. A friend gave you a precious watch from abroad, which you love so much. One day, you broke the watch. You cried for the watch, your heart was broken together with the broken watch, as if your world devastated. But if the same broken watch was owned by someone else, you surely would not cry at all. Nobody would cry for a broken watch. It was your attachment to the watch which bring the tears. Another story was about a woman whose baby passed away. She loved the baby so much and the death made her totally mad. She then came to Buddha. Buddha said that he could help her. What she needed to do was to go to the city, collect sesame from any family who had never seen death. She went from one house to another house. But where she can find such a family? All families have stories of death, all families have sufferings of their own, and some even were more suffering than her. When she realized this, she came back to Buddha, and agreed to receive the teaching of Dhamma. The understanding of this Truth is a wisdom of life. Nobody is free from death. There is no use to deny this Truth, to reject and run away from the Truth. One day our body will be buried or burned. All the sensations will vanish, all what we have collected in life will be taken away, all of the heroes will have to go back to zeros. Disclaimer: This is my personal experience of taking Vipassana meditation. If you are interested to start your Vipassana meditation, you may check dhamma. Enjoy the journey and be happy! Agustinus is an Indonesian travel writer and travel photographer. He was stranded and stayed three years in Afghanistan until He is now a full-time writer and based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Pengalaman yg sangat menarik. Kemarin sy baca artikel yg pertama, sudah ga sabar pengen baca lanjutanya. Pengen juga Dari duly ikut sesi meditasi. All rights reserved. Goenka spiritual Vipassana. About Agustinus Wibowo Agustinus is an Indonesian travel writer and travel photographer. Titik Nol Dukun. Jalan Panjang Melatih Kesadaran Pikiran. Leave a comment Cancel reply Your email address will not be published.

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