Well, Labour seems to have given in to the pressure of criticism and withdrawn their support from the Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election. It must be hard to stand by your principles when you’re stuck between possible accusations of anti-semitism on the one hand and islamophobia on the other. Of course, you have to have principles to stand by in the first place!
Apparently it’s too late to select a new candidate or indeed withdraw Azhar Ali altogether. So he remains on the ballot paper as a Labour Candidate but if elected he will then stand as an independent MP and will not receive the Labour whip. Its going to be very confusing for voters.
Yesterday evening on-the television news I heard King Abdullah II of Jordan speaking about Gaza, appealing for peace for his part of the world. I was impressed by his fluent command of English, possible more fluent than President Biden’s, his host at the White House. When you do a bit of research, however, you discover that his mother is (or was) British, Toni Avril Gardiner before she changed her name to Muna Al Hussein when she married King Hussein. So I’m assuming he grew up bi-lingual, a useful thing for a king!
On the subject of bilingualism, I was reading about Harry Kane visiting Kirchweidach, a village of 2,000 people deep in rural Bavaria. Apparently Bayern Munich has a tradition of sending players to visit supporters’ club branches all over German. The club is owned by fans and I suppose this is a way of keeping fans happy and prepared to continue contributing. This year Kirchweidach got Harry Kane. According to the article I found, Kane wasn’t due to arrive until midday but people started queueing at 8.30. That’s a serious fanbase!
Quite a lot of them, the journalist wrote, wore lederhosen. I’m assuming that’s the men, but I could be jumping to wrong conclusions. Maybe women like to wear lederhosen too. Maybe lederhosen are particularly comfortable. Or perhaps in rural Bavaria they just like to wear national dress. Do Bavarian women like to wear dirndl skirts? I wonder. Harry Kane says, “It’s strange, after playing in the Premier League and England, just to be in a different country – obviously I don’t know the language, thankfully a lot of people speak English. It’s not easy and it takes a bit of getting used to. I’m just trying to take it day by day and slowly learn their ways, the way they do things. Even this [today] is unique. We didn’t have this before [in England] so it’s quite fun.”
He might be finding German difficult but his children seem to be settling in: “They’re in school now and have been skiing the last couple of weekends. Just having that has been great for them. We’ve met a few of the parents at school and made friends with teammates’ wives and kids. Slowly but surely it starts to feel like home.” Having the children there will be a good ice-breaker and he’s probably correct when he says, “They’ll be speaking the language before me too.” It doesn’t take very long for children to learn a language when dropped into it in school; they’re like little sponges.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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