Whaaaaaat! So Nigel Farage was a bully at school.,. Come on BBC Grow up and stop being so petty and pathetic, jenny namaste
Of course he was a bully. Still is. It's a trait of small minded fearful boys who grow up to be small minded fearful men who, especially, have no liking or respect for women and girls. No wonder he's pally with Trump and Musk!
One of my neighbours has an old Mini that he takes to shows. It really is tiny compared to the modern day "tanks" that most people drive. I must say I've always fancied a soft top Mini as driven by Luella Shakespeare in Shakespeare and Hathaway. A local garage had one in British Racing Green and my name written all over it . Going back to the original Mini, my now husband had a 1969 Cooper when we started "courting". Looking at the size of my neighbour's car, I must have been pretty flexible back in the day .
It's a trait of public school boys. Boris was a bully at Oxford towards state school undergraduates, and both he and Cameron belonged to the bullying Bullingdon club. When you have it instilled in you from an early age that you are superior to others that sticks with you.
Miss Jiff & me were bullyed at school, Miss Jiff's bully after a good number of years wanted to say sorry but Miss Jiff said " up yours" it was only a few years after that we found out the bully's daughter was being bullyed that's why he wanted to say sorry It goes to show things can turn themself's around!!!!!!!
If an apology is genuine ( whether related to bullying or other forms of misbehaviour ) and remorse is genuine, that's a good thing. Unfortunately, there are so many instances of someone saying " I apologise" but then continuing in a similar vein that apologies are often treated as meaning nothing. Nigel Farage did not come across very well in his interview to put it mildly.
When someone says "I apologise if such and such upset you", I always think it's not a genuine apology. I always see an unspoken "but that's your problem, not mine" on the end.
Its not so much the BBC its some newspaper that has dragged up something from 50yrs ago when things were very different, its just gone from one extreme to the other these days and I wish people would not judge what happened 50yrs ago through todays eyes. Half the comedy programmes we watched back then would be blacklisted now, (am I allowed to say that?), What is considered bullying now was just normal in those days, you either got over it or became a victim. Anyone who took on an apprenticeship in those days could say that by today's standards they were bullied, you just had to get over it. Everyone is so soft today, no wonder they all cant work and have mental health issues.
Apparently the story appeared in 2013 in a book on Nigel Farage, but very few pupils were named. The Guardian did further research and more of his fellow pupils agreed to being named and that is what the Guardian published.
It is much easier to be "offended" now - social media has given practically everyone a voice and hence an opinion. Some sensible/reasonable and some not. The fact that even small children are open to so called Influencers must have some effect on their life and beliefs into adulthood. Altho times change over the years and what was considered acceptable 50 years ago, there are some attitudes which are never acceptable to a reasonable person - murder and sexual abuse, criminal behaviour , religious hatred and war. The BBC was well known for it's various satirical programmes - seemingly not many people actually understand satire these days. Shame really.
I think the current trend for being offended by everything is a sort of authoritarianism dressed up as sensitivity to particular issues. It is an "I do not like/agree with this and therefore it must be stopped and perpetrators must be shamed; there can be no discussion because I am absolutely sure I am right and you must fall in line" attitude that seems to allow cults to flourish.
I am almost feeling sorry for Rachel Reeves. Someone has leaked the OBR response to her budget online less than an hr before she has to get up and deliver it to a jeering Commons.
