I’ve seen a few interviews with Peter Ettedgui . As well as saying that Hitler was right, Farage used to sing “Gas ’em all” (the lyrics of which I briefly saw on a Bluesky post this afternoon, and they are utterly repugnant) and he’d make hissing sounds like gas escaping, presumably into a gas chamber. Sounds Trumpian to me.
There is a longer video here from ITV News.
The longer video points out that these insults were daily, over a long period of time, so not a little phase, and that there was no escaping from them as pupils were seated in alphabetical order… which meant they were at adjoining desks…E and F.
What on earth was the teacher doing?
Dulwich College had christian and jewish assemblies and sometimes Farage and his mates would wait outside the jewish assembly to insult the pupils as they came out.
Of course anyone who wasn’t white English ‘christian’ was a target, not just jews. He seemed to loathe everyone.
One big question for the college is, why on earth was this allowed to happen when parents were paying massive fees (see below) to send their children there and this was being ignored?
(Currently day pupil fees are £10,164 per term for Years 3-8 and £10,206 per term for Years 9-13. Weekly boarding fees are £20,020 per term, and full boarding fees are £21,422 per term. Presumably they will have risen around the rate of inflation.)
I can only imagine that there may well be some parents reconsidering where to send their kids now…
**********
Late addition: Nigel Farage has been slated for a ‘repulsive’ and ‘deeply racist’ attack on Glasgow schoolchildren as part of his Scottish campaign after he claimed those who don’t principally speak English are ‘culture smashing’ the city, reports The National. Never mind that we had English forced on us…
Apparently there are around a million Brits living in Spain. I wonder if they all speak Spanish as a first language. And I wonder if, on the rare occasions when Farage turned up to his job in the EU parliament, what language he spoke in the local bistros and bars.
I always think it’s amusing how it doesn’t occur to some Brits that most people in the world, apart from them, speak at least two languages.
************
Silly related story. I have a friend with whom I worked for a few years, both of us teaching French. I was introduced to him on his first day by another colleague was actually WAS French. We fell into the habit of always speaking in French to each other and that has lasted.
One day a few years ago, he phoned me while I was standing in a queue in the post office, just in front of two women. As I was talking to him I heard one of them say, “Them f’ing Polaks; wish they’d learn tae speak English”.
I excused myself from my pal, and turned to them and in my poshest “English” accent, I pointed out that I was in fact speaking French, which, as I was sure they would know, was a Romance European language, whilst Polish was, as I was also sure they would know, a West Slavic language, and really quite different.
I smiled politely and went back to my conversation with my pal, saying just I thought of them, the polite version of which would read ‘Mon dieu, ces deux sont vraiment imbéciles.
***********
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 