Latest news with #MrsT
Telegraph
01-03-2025
- Telegraph
Police quiz grandfather who called neighbour ‘Mrs T---' in row over dog
Police officers questioned a grandfather for more than an hour after he called his neighbour 'Mrs T---' in a row about his dog. Laurence Meir, 73, was visited twice at his home in Gorsley, Herefordshire, by police who warned him not to use the term again. The grandfather has now accused West Mercia Police of wasting time on 'trivial nonsense' instead of tackling real crime. In January last year, Mr Meir's dachshund Dixie strayed into his neighbour's front garden, prompting the neighbour to allegedly call him a 't---'. The neighbours had another run-in several weeks later, during which Mr Meir said 'Hello Mrs T---'. Days later, two officers from West Mercia Police arrived at his home and questioned him for more than an hour about the incident, before warning him not to get 'involved' with her again. 'I found it disgusting' 'I admitted to the officers that I acted a bit immaturely in saying 'hello Mrs T---' to my neighbour,' he told MailOnline. 'But did that really merit two of them spending more than an hour questioning me about this? 'On one hand it's quite laughable but on the other, I found it disgusting. If you're the victim of real crime, the police don't turn up or investigate it properly. 'But call someone half-jokingly a 't---' and they're around almost immediately. The whole thing is a farce. You couldn't make it up.' The police then visited his home for a second time after the neighbour complained he poked his tongue out at her children. 'I was livid that the police had come to see me again about such a pathetic matter and couldn't believe that they were wasting more of their time,' he said. 'I told the officers that I didn't stick my tongue out at these kids and that they should go and catch some real criminals. 'But the police warned me that if it happened again then they would be forced to take further action. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, it really shows that the police have got their priorities completely wrong.' 'How can that be right?' Mr Meir added: 'We might live in a lovely village but the crime rate around here is going through the roof. That's what the police should be focusing on, not on silly comments that people might say to each other or what they're posting on social media. 'It makes me very angry that serious matters are not being investigated properly yet the police have the time and resources to waste time on minor things like this. How can that be right?' A spokesman for West Mercia Police said: 'We received a report on March 18 2024 of a dispute between neighbours on Linton Road in Gorsley, Herefordshire. Officers attended and suitable words of advice where [sic] given.' The case comes after police spoke to grandmother Helen Jones, 54, at her home in Stockport, Cheshire, last month after she criticised Labour politicians online for sending offensive WhatsApp messages. The school administrator had posted on Facebook calling for the resignation of a councillor embroiled in the WhatsApp scandal which led to the sacking of Andrew Gwynne, the former health minister.
Telegraph
06-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
I would pay not to go to Thatcher the Opera
Oh. My. Goodness. Can you think of anything weirder than Mrs T , an opera based on the premiership of Margaret Thatcher? But that's what's in store. It's the centenary of her birth this year and so someone had the genius idea of commissioning an opera, presumably on the basis that if a musical worked for Eva Peron – why not Mrs T, the opera ? I'm thinking of a succession of pussy cat bows, statement handbags and firm coiffures for the mezzo soprano in the title role, Lucy Schauffer. And I am longing to see who gets cast as Denis. But an opera is musical drama. It's not history. When it is history, like say, Mind you, the composer, Joseph Phibbs, is not one for the rollicking, singalong melody. I think we're safe betting that the audience won't come out of the production, humming the tunes. The librettist is Dominic Sandbrook, the historian and one of the two There's nothing particularly discordant about the combination of Mrs Thatcher and classical music in itself. She wasn't a philistine, though she did once tell The Guardian that she particularly liked Handel on account of 'all those marvellous tunes'. Miriam Gross wrote a fascinating essay in The Oldie about researching her musical tastes and it turned out that she told Isaiah Berlin that she once took part in the Oxford university production of Prince Igor. Whaddya know? Plus she was in the university Bach chorus. But the trouble with opera is that there isn't much room for nuance. It's good on murder, suicide, passionate trysts and dying of consumption and incarceration in a pyramid. It would be less good on policy arguments about privatisation, Commons debates and party conferences, though I can see that there's scope for good chorus action in a depiction of the miners' strike. An operatic character is either bad or good, like a cartoon, because the music has to send out a message; he or she is rarely a matter of light and shade. And Mrs T was a complex and interesting character; she was divisive and combative and destructive in many of her policies, but she was also kind, principled and rather religious. Dominic Sandbrook is too good an historian to be partisan, to give us a caricature, but there's a limit to what the form will allow. I am, therefore, rather dreading Mrs T, the opera . It is unlikely to work as opera and it can't work as history. It may however be good fun.
Telegraph
05-02-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Give Kemi time – her plan is starting to work
As she strives to rebuild the Worse still, some Tories are already gunning for the Leader of the Opposition None of this would have surprised Yet Mrs T took no notice of the 'naysayers' or the 'moaning minnies', as she called them. Nor will Mrs B, who is made of the same stuff as the Iron Lady. For the truth is that, largely unremarked by a mainly hostile media, Kemi is making rapid progress in the monumental task that she has set herself. For the first time in two generations, this leader is not chasing ephemeral soundbites, but is rethinking the foundations of Conservatism. To this end she has assembled the broadest-based Shadow Cabinet possible and enlisted some of the brightest minds in the kingdom. She has elevated to the Lords the Mrs Thatcher was an Oxford-trained chemist who learnt early on that one must trust evidence, not authority. Her family had taken in a Jewish refugee from the Nazis. Like her, Kemi Badenoch knows exactly what it is like to be intimidated by a monolithic state. Under a military dictatorship in Nigeria, where this British-born computer scientist grew up, life was ruled by fear. As leader, Kemi has refused to let herself be rushed on policy. But she has struck the right, tough-minded note on the biggest issue of the day: immigration. She knows that Nigel Farage By contrast, Kemi will step up the pressure on the Government this week by calling for a radical reform of the period required for Indefinite Leave to Remain. It should be ten years, not five, she says, and the conditions should be much stricter. Migrants should have to prove that their household is a net contributor and that they have no criminal record. 'Our country is not a dormitory,' she declares. 'It's our home.' As someone who first met Kemi soon after she became an MP eight years ago, I can say with confidence that she is one of the most patriotic people I know. She loves this country with a passion that is as infectious as it has been absent from our politics for years. It is impossible to imagine Mrs Badenoch paying an enormous bribe to a Chinese satellite to take over a British territory Mrs B, like Mrs T before her, is the kind of leader who emerges once in a generation. Ignore the polls: no general election is in prospect. Kemi's mood music may not yet be to everybody's taste, but in three or four years' time it will have built up to an almighty crescendo. A land of hope and glory? Under Kemi – and only her – it's credible.
