Woman in Audience Tells Academic 'Facts of Life'

[Teddy Bear]

Question Time is one of the few rare occasions when any of those left-wing types prevalent across the BBC broadcasting can be confronted for the mostly ridiculous views they hold. This is only providing the BBC has invited those of the right wing willing to challenge on the panel, or despite being a minority, somebody in the audience.

In this case it was somebody in the audience, and from the sound of it, being affected by the circumstances that the left-wing mindset so easily dismisses in order to maintain their desired view, was having none of it.

There was another article related to this Question Time episode which I posted here.

Our town's like a foreign country and locals can't cope with the immigrants, says mother after TV clash with academic on Question Time

• Office worker Rachel Bull challenged leading historian Mary Beard on the impact of immigration on her Lincolnshire
  
• The academic dismissed claims the town is being overwhelmed by migrant workers as 'myths', but Mrs Bull insists Boston is 'at breaking point'

By John Stevens

A mother who tackled a leading historian on live television about immigration insisted last night that her family’s home town has become like a ‘foreign country’.

On BBC1’s Question Time, Professor Mary Beard dismissed stories about the number of migrant workers overwhelming Boston as ‘myths’ and said ‘public services can cope’.

But Rachel Bull, an office manager in Boston, who was in the audience, immediately challenged the Cambridge University classics professor, claiming hospitals and schools are struggling to cope in the Lincolnshire agricultural town.

Mrs Bull – whose grandparents moved to Britain from Poland after the Second World War – said that she is not against immigration, but believes ministers should reconsider allowing Romanians and Bulgarians unrestricted rights to live and work in the UK from December 2013.

After Professor Beard – known to millions for the BBC2 series Meet the Romans – told Question Time on Thursday night she believed local services in Boston are able to cope, Mrs Bull raised her hand and said: ‘I’m sorry, I really disagree.’

She told the panel, which was sitting in Lincoln: ‘I have a business in Boston, I have family that live in Boston and we’ve got land at Boston and we’ve had major issues with workers who’ve got nowhere to go, camping on our land and we can’t move them off because the police aren’t interested. Boston is at breaking point. All the locals can’t cope any more – the services, doctors’ surgeries, hospitals.

‘I have a family member that’s a midwife at Boston Pilgrim Hospital. The facilities are at breaking point because of these people coming into the country and nothing is being done. You go down to Boston High Street and it’s just like you’re in a foreign country. And it’s got to stop.’

Yesterday Mrs Bull said that Boston, which has a population of around 61,000, is too small to cope with such a large number of migrants, now thought to number 9,000.
'At breaking point': Mrs Bull said facilities in her Lincolnshire hometown are overstretched because of the influx of workers from overseas

'At breaking point': Mrs Bull said facilities in her Lincolnshire hometown are overstretched because of the influx of workers from overseas

She added: ‘The problem is we’re not like these politicians or other people on television, we’re on the frontline. I’ve not been to university, I’m just a 35-year-old who spoke from the heart.’

Mrs Bull, whose family has a retirement home business, said she is worried that more migrants from Romania and Bulgaria will make the problems worse.

She said many workers head to the area on the promise of work, but end up without employment or money.

Mrs Bull, who has a 10-year-old son, said: ‘They are going to come to Boston because of the landworkers, the farms and agriculture, that’s where they would get work.

‘But we’ve got so many homeless on the streets, this town has so many problems that are just being swept under the carpet and the locals are crying out. Someone needs to help us.

‘I don’t want it to be about them and us. We all want to work together as one, but when resources are stretched that’s when the animosity starts, and we don’t want that.’ Mrs Bull, who now lives elsewhere in Lincolnshire, said her family has had repeated problems with migrants camping on their land and that it has been impossible to get help from the authorities and police to move them.

'I don't want it to be about them and us... but when resources are stretched that's when the animosity starts, and we don't want that'

She said: ‘My dad and brother used to go there every day as my dad speaks Polish, to explain to them that they have to move on because we were getting complaints from environmental health, and local residents were complaining about the mess they were leaving. There were empty bottles, human faeces, needles.

‘We felt sorry for them as there was a young couple who had been promised work, they’d been dropped off in Boston, had their passports taken off them, they had no money, and they were just left stranded.

‘We gave them a bit of money for them to get some food and drink to help them out, but the numbers just grew.’

Mrs Bull’s grandfather was a flight sergeant who fought for Britain, flying Lancaster Bombers and Mosquitoes.

She said her family is proud of its background and enjoy pierogi – traditional dumplings – from the local Polish shops.

She said: ‘We just want help from the Government, and we want them to reconsider when the Romanians and the Bulgarians come in.’

VIDEO (available on webpage): Rachel Bull tackles Mary Beard on Question Time

[Teddy Bear]

Rod Liddle at the Spectator has written a piece about Mary Beard to which she commented. My reply to her received an answer, and a reply from her, but you can see for yourselves what she fixates on, and what she ignores.

First here's the article:

It’s not misogyny, Professor Beard. It’s you

Oh, this age! How tasteless and ill-bred it is.’
— Gaius Valerius Catullus

‘I do not know whom Mary Beard is but wyth a name lyke that she surely has a third teat and a hairy clopper.’
— Internet posting following Professor Mary Beard’s appearance on Question Time

So Catullus, mate — things have not got much better over the last two thousand years. People, it seems, are still ill-bred and tasteless, as that second quote up there would suggest. It was not the most tasteless comment on the internet over the last week or so, or even the most tasteless to be directed at Mary Beard, Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge. There are others, most so vulgar even I wouldn’t repeat them, from quite the most ghastly ill-bred people. I suppose it is shocking that someone of Professor Beard’s standing and breeding is forced to suffer its hideous manifestations.

What happened was this. Professor Beard was invited to take part on the BBC’s Question Time programme, where she made what can be politely described as an utter fool of herself. I run a small, light-hearted competition every year on my blog for people to vote for the most stupid woman to have appeared on Question Time in the past 12 months. It is but the third week of January and Mary is already a shoo-in, I fear, unless they ask Lynne Featherstone — the Manchester United, nay the Barcelona, of this particular award — back on to the show.

Anyway, having performed with stumbling vapidity in her earlier answers, she turned to the question of immigration and the influx of Bulgarians and Romanians we are all looking forward to welcoming to our shores next January. Mary managed to appear smug, patrician and fabulously ill-informed in her answer, which was to the effect that a study in Lincolnshire had suggested that immigration had caused nary a problem at all but had added immeasurably to the rich diversity of the area — and so, she concluded, there would be no problems at all from this next wave.

Unfortunately, she was speaking in Lincolnshire at the time and the lowly born, perhaps ill-bred audience quickly disabused her of this ludicrous notion with multiple descriptions of what it was like to live in a place which has been swamped with eastern European workers; their lack of homes, the crime, the antisocial behaviour, the pressure on local resources and so on.

Beyond the confines of the programme, Beard’s remarks were greeted with frank hilarity and in some cases anger. She was very quickly made ‘Twat of the Week’ on a non-aligned website and the insults started flowing. Most of them were accurate refutations of her vacuous argument, or expressions of annoyance at her middle-class, metropolitan insouciance. But it is true that some ridiculed her appearance as well.

Outrageous, tweeted Beard! (Yes, the Prof tweets, and that tells you something.) ‘The misogyny here is truly gob-smacking,’ she whined: all those comments were ‘truly vile’. She triumphantly listed the most graphic comments on her blog and concluded that the abuse would ‘be quite enough to put many women off appearing in public’. If only that were true in Mary’s case, but I strongly suspect it isn’t. On the broader point, that the comments are vile — yes, indeed. I have made the case before that the internet has shown us as we really are, which is not terribly nice, all things considered. But misogyny? First, the majority of abuse was about what she said — not how she looked. But does she really believe that men do not get the same level of abuse when they have angered people on TV, or in print, or on the internet? Does she think that in the case of men, the comments are restricted to a coolly delivered and logical series of counter-arguments which eschew any and all personal denigration? Is she really that thick?

I have lost count of the times my own penis — a harmless enough creature, really — has been invoked, most usually by women, during an attempted refutation of some point I have made in an article. It is, I have been assured, minuscule, or inoperative, or unwashed, or diseased, or nonexistent. Sometimes all of these things at once. And as with Mary, the remainder of my physical being is not left unremarked: fat, hideous, stinking, vile, ugly… oh, lordy, we could be here for weeks. It is nothing to do with misogyny; it is just what people reach for when they, perhaps temporarily, hate someone. I remember a short while ago a complaint that Muslims in the public eye were subjected to the most horrid nastiness — the journalist Mehdi Hasan was one of the loudest complainants. Again, no, Mehdi; it’s not your religion, or the colour of your skin — it’s you. It’s just you.

But there’s one other thing in the case of Mary Beard. How many professors of classics have you seen on BBC Question Time, other than Beardie? None. How many other professors of classics have been invited to take part in Jamie’s Dream School, or been invited to present a series on BBC2? None other. Just Beard. Why is this? Is it because she is so absolutely brilliant at the classics that they think she ought to be on a cooking show? Nope: it’s because of the way she looks. They think she looks like a loony. And the TV companies, the producers, love that. If they can’t get a hunk or a fox, they like an eccentric. It generates a reaction, not always entirely pleasant. And if Mary doesn’t grasp that her appearance is precisely why she — along with Grayson Perry — gets to be on TV, then she had best not look at what the genuine loonies have to say on Twitter.

My first comment on this piece was this:

Beard shares the same mindset as the BBC. The belief that their theory sounds so good, that despite all evidence to show it doesn't work, they persist pushing their agenda.

In the case of the BBC they simply patronisingly dismiss complaints directed at them for pursuing an agenda, instead of adhering to their charter. They are so oblivious of the real ignorance of their way of seeing the world, but they use their power to shove it aside, and make themselves the only voice heard. They will never see the truth, even when there is nobody left to agree with them, because of the facts on the ground.

Beard doesn't have that power, so she got the reaction that many of us would like to inflict on the BBC. They do so much to destroy what was a decent society in their pursuit of an ill thought out agenda.

She then posted this, with the subsequent replies after.

mary beard • 2 hours ago

ok just two points: 1) i commend the Boston local council report (not county council) to ant readers. It includes facts and figures, eye witness testimony and urges myth busting. 2) Rod Liddle himself recognises the nastiness of the site. but readers, let me urge you to reflect whether this is whining about appearances. Sod appearances. Suggestions of ramming things up my vagina are not about appearances. Nuff said.

Teddy Bear to mary beard • 2 hours ago

Ms Beard - I doubt anybody would be making comments on your appearance, or even care, if your mindset really took in THE EFFECT of your desired way of thinking, contemplated the real consequences, then adjusted your thoughts as necessary. Instead, you prefer to think that everybody who disagrees with your beliefs are either misogynists, or in the case of Question Time - xenophobic.

You might do well to open your mind to what is being expressed - and WHY, and take that on-board. Nobody cares what wisdom looks like if that is what is being expressed.

Mary Beard to teddy bear
it is hard to imagine what people who reflect on rogering 58 year old women, and shoving things up their c**** are (this is from the website, not me). I am thick skinned, but...

Teddy Bear to mary beard
Can you imagine that these people are simply angry, and are not well enough educated to express themselves any better? They simply want to hurt you the way they feel that you, and those of your mindset, are hurting them.

If you don't listen - expect rage and shouting!

So far no reply, I'll add it if she does.
But as you can see, she doesn't address the points raised, merely makes herself the victim. She needs to see that it is because of the many others that her type of thinking have made victims, that she is getting this insulting response.

[Teddy Bear]

Well no further response from her so here's my final comment concerning her behaviour since Question Time.



Well judging by the response Ms. Beard gave to my replies to her, and just focussing on the abuse she received, but not addressing the reasons for anger that led to that abuse, it's clear it's her way of avoiding the fact that she got it wrong.

'Methinks she protesteth too much.'

She may be book smart, but that's a big difference from being street smart. I've no doubt if she was questioned in a classroom about this abusive behaviour she could explain very cogently what causes people to react the way they did. The only reason she clings to making herself the victim, is not to own up to her own failings.

This is the problem with lefties, they adhere to ways of thinking because it 'sounds good' in their mind, so it must be good. Then they go on ostrich-like to avoid the reality that might prove them wrong. So they never learn.