2 big stories
Black Lives Matter. A simple statement that probably ought not to be necessary, but is. The demonstrations in our bigger towns and cities will have drawn most of the coverage, but the picture is from that well-known radical heartland of Bury St Edmunds, where a demonstration took place yesterday afternoon. Perhaps it is a sign of promise that, even in a community like this, where the non-white population is small, hundreds of people felt moved to express their anger at the injustice of a society which treats black people in the way that George Floyd was treated.
Is mainstream Republicanism beginning to edge away from Donald Trump in the run up to November’s US Presidential election? First, Sen. Lisa Murkowski indicated that she was struggling to support him, and now former US Secretary of State, Colin Powell has publicly accused him of being “a liar and a danger to the nation“. Admittedly, he didn’t support him in 2016, but such an overt condemnation must sting a bit, evidenced by the response via Twitter.
And, with recent polls showing Joe Biden with a ten point lead, and competitive in states he doesn’t even need to win to make it to the White House, is there a light at the end of this particularly grim tunnel?
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Recent events have put the spotlight on policing and how minority communities not only don’t feel supported but actively threatened by law enforcement agencies. Brian Paddick reflects on the issue…
To finish on a lighter note, giving evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee can be quite stressful, albeit they’re far more measured than those in the Commons. And here, one of the Clerks in the Lords demonstrates how to handle distractions…
How to handle an unexpected intruder like a pro, in the middle of giving evidence to a @UKHouseofLords select committee.https://t.co/hP97mQHTOT pic.twitter.com/s3mGiz50Ve
— Matt Korris (@MattKorris) June 4, 2020
Good effort, Sally Jones!
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2 Comments
Besides expressing anger at what happens to people of colour around the world, the gatherings we have seen, quite often minus social distancing but mainly with protesters wearing face masks and often surgical type gloves as well, could give us an idea of what happens when people do crowd together, albeit in the open air, with the virus still around. If the infection rates stay about the same then it may give us hope that premature unlocking may not be the danger some predict. What it might also show is whether wearing a face mask in public really does have the desired effect. One more thing. I sincerely hope that these protests do not continue to get highjacked by those people seeking to cause trouble and social unrest, whether from the left or the right as well as those criminals just wishing to loot, trash and burn.
On the BBC this morning someone who had worked with Obama commented that many American policemen had joined the White Supremacists