This is Northumberland Calling 21.4.23

The Real Kings eat Quiche edition

This is Northumberland Calling

Real Kings Do Eat Quiche edition

  King Charles and Queen Camilla have chosen a quiche now titled Coronation Quiche to be served at the Coronation big lunches. Who knows if with cheddar cheese, broad beans and spinach  the dish  will as popular as Coronation Chicken, the dish invented for his mother’s coronation? The king apparently quite likes it and thinks it is good for sharing.  The recipe is here: https://www.royal.uk/the-coronation-quiche

Real Party Treasurers do get arrested. This week it was the turn of the SNP treasurer Colin Beattie to be arrested and questioned over the alleged £600k fraud. The question is will Nicola Sturgeon be questioned? https://archive.is/kbyN5

Real U-turns are being made by the SNP. The ban on alcohol advertising has been dropped much to the joy of the Scotch Whisky industry. The bottle deposit scheme has been postponed and Scotland in the interests of transparency will once again give its literacy and numeracy figures to international standards on education (something they have not done since 2010) He is still going ahead with the legal challenge to the UK government about the Gender Reform Bill. https://archive.is/3nE6c

Real teachers should not be fired for saying ‘good morning girls’ to a group of single sex students, according to Gillian Keegan, the Education Minister, after the papers reported that a teacher at a private school had been eased out . New guidelines are coming within weeks. https://archive.is/uJt3X

This is an op-ed from Miriam Cates, the MP who has been working hard to get these guidelines about some of the common sense measures which should be in the guidelines: https://archive.is/6KcEn

Real Romans nibbled pen ends. After decades in the dark, a new exhibition has opened in Rome detailing various objects found at the Forum, including stylus with the eraser part nibbled by a nervous Roman (some things never change). It will be housed in one of the most evocative parts of the forum – a street where you can still see the Roman shops. https://archive.is/3qMkU

The Women’s Rights Network has uncovered the truly shocking figures on the sexual assaults being covered up in UK hospitals. In a four year period, nearly 6,500 assaults were report, only 265 people were charged. Some of these assaults include rape of under 13 years olds (both boys and girls).  The report made several papers. Northumbria which includes the Newcastle upon Tyne area  had 225 sexual assaults and 52 rapes, Durham had 13 sexual assaults and 2 rapes  during the period in question. https://www.womensrights.network/hospital-report

What Ho Jeeves, it’s a rum to do. Not content with Dahl, Agatha Christie and James Bond, the sensitivity censors have taken their red pens to PG Wodehouse and Jeeves and Wooster. The main problem appears to be that he wrote his books which are true comic genius during the 1920s and 1930s and the attitudes in those books reflect the times in which Wodehouse wrote. Of course if you expunge the references, then you can argue nothing has truly altered. https://archive.is/yOODB

Lionel Shriver gave a brilliant interview to Unherd about the state of the publishing industry. In it she related Douglas Murray’s trials with his former publisher Bloomsbury “ I’ll tell you an interesting story. I hope Douglas Murray is cool with this. Douglas recently changed publishing company from Bloomsbury to HarperCollins. And by the way, HarperCollins, in the big picture here, has acquitted itself quite well. They’re my publisher and they have not given me a hard time, much less fired me. And they have been a refuge for a number of other authors who have fallen out with their publishers. But this particular instance of leaving Bloomsbury was interesting to me because of a twist. They were wrangling over the contractual details — they didn’t actually want to lose Douglas — believe it or not but they threatened Douglas with their younger staff. They used their younger staff as a weapon and said, “you know, you’re lucky: our younger staff hasn’t gone for you. The younger staff of all the other publishing companies wouldn’t put up with you. So we’re the only people who would have you.” It’s really underhanded, really creepy. And of course, it was a lie. Douglas didn’t have any trouble finding someone else to publish him. He’s very profitable. It was using the current political situation to get what they wanted in a much more mercantile sense, not in an ideological sense.” https://archive.is/jbfHZ