Policing crisis & Douglas Murray on Elgin Marbles - The Week in 60 Minutes | SpectatorTV 

As always Douglas 100% on the mark. Wish our leaders had half of his intelligence.

Why people don't see GP's in the UK: 1) Call the surgery and listen to a 5 minute recording about staying away if you have COVID symptoms 2) Join a queue for 20-40 minutes, pray that you don't get cut off or low battery 3) Next appointment is next month - the end of next month - unless you can convince them it's some kind of emergency 4) If you manage to convince them it's an emergency, get told to ring back later when more appointments will be 'released' 5) If you persist and get an appointment, feel guilty about taking up the precious NHS resource 6) Sit in a waiting room that looks like an airport departure lounge with people coughing and crying. Appointment starts 40 mins late. 7) Totally random outcome - the stand-in locum you see (your regular GP is away) - can't access your history, doesn't know you, and might be OK or totally crap OR - just don't go, and feel noble for 'protecting the NHS'.

A German museum returned their Benin bronzes to Nigeria. They have now disappeared and are likely in a corrupt politicians living room.

There is NO ONE I'd rather listen to than Douglas Murray ❤ any platform, any place, any time!

i see Douglas Murray, i click

Sunak has mixed allegiances, strong ties to India, he doesnt love England like we do, he's OK if cities are no longer English, he's OK with millions more Indians coming here. Thing is WE WERE NEVER ASKED

Douglas Murray, so eloquent. Totally agree about his comments on the trustees of these great collections.

The British Museum doesn't have the Elgin Marbles any more. I bought them on EBay weeks ago.

I’d listen to Douglas Murray anytime.

Sad to loose Ben Wallace, one of the final good torys.

India is full up and needs more space. It's just common sense that they move to the vast, empty open spaces of England.

I always click for Douglas. We need him weekly!

I have a teacher friend in Poland. She cannot start work at the beginning of the year without a clean bill of health from her annual end of summer health check. It’s part of their policy of delivering high quality education. Yes. If only that were a thing in the UK ..

We seem determined to destroy our history, both physical and written (or taught), out of a feeling of guilt and the need for self-flagellation. Obviously, creating the best and most advanced society the human race has ever seen is a heavy load to carry??

The idea that there should be a free trade deal with India is madness Britain will be swamped with young Indians given the difference in wages lifestyles and other aspects of like

The UK has marginally less GDP than India. UK GDP is divided amongst a much smaller population. As individuals we are vastly more wealthy than Indians. They are far less able to purchase our goods (which we seem to have abandoned making anyway) than we are able to purchase theirs. Why do we always negotiate from a position of weakness when we are significantly the stronger party?

Send 2.5 billion to India, who still don’t have consistent access to basic modern toilets, and they are putting people on the moon. This wouldn’t have even made it onto a 90’s comedy sketch. Meanwhile our taxes go up.

Kate Andrews - "most people in Britain do not want a drs appointment by choice because they are afraid of the drs, dont want bad news and feel bad about taking up another person's appointment" Kate Andrews (then minutes later after being corrected by interviewer) - "oh of course there are a lotto people that do want to see a dr that can't, 7 million people on a waiting list to see a doctor - you can understandably come to the conclusion - whats the point" where do you find these ppl? the spectator use to be a gathering of intellect not pyramid selling.

Douglas' hair is looking good.

Douglas Murray is spot on to characterise Osborne as a 'Mid-Life Tory'. Recent history is abound with many similar examples to the detriment of the UK.

Great. So Shapes will be a yes man to more military cuts. Utterly pathetic.

Well done Douglas 👏

Can someone explain why, if India is doing so well and also has a space programme, one of the largest demographic rocking up on our shores, are people from India and when I say people I mean men .We are also still funding India. I, for the life of me cannot understand this.

Good on you Kate. We needed to hear this!

24:54 "It is very difficult to get a British visa if you're an Indian citizen." Wait, is it? Why did we admit 750,000 people from India last year then? Is that enough?

The Brits rescued the Elgin Marbles from the Greeks of the day; and now it's the Greeks turn to rescue them from the Britons of today. God bless the "Elgin" marbles.

The Police seem adequately resourced to send 6 or 7 officers to investigate hurt feelings or to turn out a Macarena Dance Troop. This is in part the result of demanding a degree ending in the word Studies when recruiting. We really need burly working class men with the necessary GCSE O Levels.

Very interesting to hear Ian Acheson…..and everyone else.

That's the best summary of policing issues in the UK I've ever heard - Ian Achinson needs a voice. Like his e.g. of NI breach, why would anyone join the police now? To join an admin apartment and not solve crimes...

Thank you Douglas Murray. As an art historian I am deeply concerned with the ever-expanding corporatism in the museums and the vanishing independence of curators. Unfortunately, there are too many masters to please. Also, junior level catalogue and label-writers pushing woke political agendas fail to understand that art and politics aren't necessarily compatible.

John + Kate at the end there = ❤

Lets be honest, India is not a friend of Britain, and that is partly due to resentment hanging over since the days of the British Empire. A bit of payback for our past 'sins'. Fair enough, they can feel that way. But one thing they do want from Britain is that we continue to provide a home for thousands of their citizens. A home, opportunities, and a lifestyle which India does not give. It is more interested in spending money on prestige projects like space exploration, rather than providing lifes essentials for their own people.

Is it not time that we protected our nation from politicians with weak ties to the UK? Surely the Prime Minister should be able to show he is British on both sides of the family for a minimum of 4 or 5 Generations. The front bench and Mayors of cities should have 3 or 4 Generations. MPs and city councillors should have 2 or 3 generations. I see too many MPs who clearly have loyalties to peoples not British.

If I were in the Greek government, I'd just keep the Elgin Marbles & refuse to give them back. I mean, what is Britain gonna do about that?!

Ian Acheson merely talks common sense so, with our broken and woke police service, what chance of his ideas being adopted? The first thing to be done is the disbanding of the police training board. Incidentally, the local government training board also needs similar attention. Police authorities and councils reminded they are there to deliver services as efficiently as possible, no more no less.

In Canada, docs are advising against yearly checks..... this started about 5 years ago

Always enjoy Kate Andrews contributions - as an interviewer she’s gently incisive and now discover she’s quietly hilarious too! A good issue to marry with humour here. Many thanks.

I believe I would totally agree with ‘Murray’s Law’. These people should never be in charge of any of our national treasures. Everyone of them must go. If India is becoming a superpower why are we still providing so much aid? If the UK has not managed to arrange new trade deals in the last 7 years means that we have the wrong Politicians and Civil Servants at the helm. So now we have a Sunak clone, a banker with Indian heritage, in charge of Net Zero, would not be my first choice. There again, I think ‘Net Zero’ should be scrapped as it is damaging the country but that is unlikely to happen with a Sunak loyalist in charge, don’t let the country one is supposed to represent and protect be a distraction. Since Blair, the Police has become too politicised and this must stop, impressed the Home Secretary has told them to do their job but nothing will happen until action was taken against the College of Policing and holding Chief Constables to account. Police should return to Policing ‘without fear or favour’ as opposed to supporting certain organisations within the country, that is not their job. Their job is tackling crime and getting to know local offenders, and stopping them, is what they should be doing, not policing ‘hurty words’.

Very intetesting that in the section of this video on India, there was no mention of the BRICS summit that took place last week in South Africa! I'm guess that the presenters don't consider BRICS as having much clout! However India did attend the summit and it was indeed PM Modi who was there in person . . . so I think he considers it important! A totally different political alignment from the G20 that India is hosting. A foot in each camp? Time will tell. Just asking for a friend . . .

GP talk needs some stats, my local GP has a long waiting time 2-4 weeks. Last time I had an infected finger I was told there was a 2 week wait, only got seen as I went the next day at opening. At the same time every time I go it's full, a wild guess is long term patents are a priority over people who rarely go. When you have privet healthcare it's easy to get seen, it's not the same for most people.

If Stonehenge had been shipped to Rome 1800 years ago, what would Murray be thinking now? Would it be better if Stonehenge was in a museum in Rome as an artifact of conquest, out of context for people to understand it, or back in Britain where it originated? Same thing for all such artifacts.

Right. So, if I understood correctly, museum directors hate the collections, and that's why they want to give them up. Never have I seen such a dishonest position. There are no Elgin Marbles. The Parthenon Marbles belong to Greece. They were made by those who gave us democracy, philosophy, drama, mathematics and who shaped our lives more than any other civilization. They belong together, in the Acropolis Museum, which is a state of the art museum as anyone lucky to have visited it knows. This is not a matter of museum directors having a middle age crisis. This is between choosing what's better for the economic interests of Britain vs what's fair. People who opt for the former are welcome to their opinion, as long as they are honest about it.

First time in my life that I strongly disagree with Douglas. The marbles are Greek heritage, taken without the permission of the Greek people to whom they belong. He basically says the BM should not return them because it will set a precedence for other countries to demand their own stolen artifacts. Yeah big surprise Douglas…

John Connolly steering commentary on the week's news. Essential watching. How can it be free??

The Elgin Marbles belong in Athens, not in London. They are the rightful inheritance of the Greek people.

That's all we need, Americans coming over here and wasting NHS time with their 'health checks'.

Douglas your hair is looking really good.

Indian immigrants have not ever been the problem. This is a common tactic if the open borders advocates, the citizens complain about uncontrollable immigration & the government cracks down on the immigrants that are welcome, when the citizens complain, they argue they can’t please everyone. Meanwhile boat loads of the people we do not want are turning up daily.

Yes, Duncan, yes! These inadequate curators should be flushed out. They are not up to preserving great collections of art and artifacts. Could we lend them to the Greeks instead of the Marbles?

Kate Andrews is spot on re my experience with our NHS GP system 😐

Shaun Greenhalgh should be commissioned to make a copy of the Elgin marbles and then hand the originals back. Even the experts could not tell his work from the originals. See documentary - The artful codgers.

I don't see the problem with Greece having the Elgin Marbles back, after all they are Greek. Don't we have enough of our own history to fill museums?

Read 'The Great Indian Middle Class' by Parvan K Varma. Not such a rosy picture!

It's obvious the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece. They were taken without permission of the Greek people, the deal was done with the Ottomans in charge at the time who in turn wanted to surpress Greek (and by extension European culture). They have a museum ready to show the Elgin Marbles as a whole in their place of origin. It is a pillar of Western culture and seeing them whole as rather than a fragment of their glory would be a celebration of that. Return should be based on a case by case basis and it is clear that Greece meets the criteria of safe return. Other's should be considered carefully and not fold to pressure. Europe has one of the world's great cultural expressions (as do so many other places) and we should celebrate it in the case of the Elgin Marbles as a whole. Anyone who supports the celebration of European culture should say the same on this particular issue.

More to the point, who gives these jobs to these fools at British institutions.

Good Grief, Kate Andrews: In a recent podcast, her solution to the expense of "Refugees" (otherwise known as criminals) is to let them work from the second they get here. Identity checks, who cares? Will that encourage more to come? Sure but she loves it. Where will they live, well in those 5 Star hotels, but they can now afford to pay for themselves with their minimum wage. I have to keep reminding myself she has an Economics Degree. Did they use coloured blocks? Clearly not or she would know she can't fit the bigger block into the smaller hole. Can someone please get her to hold a pint pot on her head & pour the numerous quarts she believes will fit in it. Stop when she admits she needs to go back to school & start at basic maths.

The argument against the Return of the Elgin marbles is that then everyone else will ask for their cultural

Wow, very interesting. The Indian interviewee thinks the trade deal with India that will cause a massive influx of Indians is a good thing.

I dont see an issue with considering returning items to nations of origins. The fact its called the british museum yet contains pharoahs....its a weak argument to claim egypt has no right to its own history

The Greeks had similar marbles there which they allowed to get destroyed by the weather. They clearly are not able to take care of such works of art.

New book coming?

I come from a police family in Hong Kong. @ 34.30 It grieves me to see two tubs of lard sitting in front of computer screens. The decline in the gen. standard of fitness/appearance of police officers in the UK does not seem to bother those who are in charge.

On Kate Andrews, health concerns. I think most people exacerbate any mild ailment they may have by worrying about it. Psychologists are studying some prevalent conditions to see if they could be, in fact, psychosomatic in essence.

Trust British people to not wanting to return other people art piece. Yes this man is correct in being concern that yes all of thrse countries you have stole from will request the there things back.

The great lie of 21st century politics vis-à-vis politics is that police are under-resourced. They have massive resources, massive funding, massive manpower and are back by _huge_ civilian expertise in a way they have never been before. Even adjusted for inflation in both monetary and population terms the resourcing of police is utterly immense. People talk about the fall in policing after 2010, but that's post a period of presumed massive UK-wide terrorism risk where policing numbers ballooned - every chart you see about these figures will always start in 2010, because the size of police before this point ballooned massively. Ask for data from the 70's, 80's, 90's. What's really changed is a whole bunch of things - clearly the population has increased, much of it immigration from places that are entirely lawless which screws with the population:crime ratios. There's been a softening of the courts willingness to use custodial sentences - even for repeat-repeat offenders - which sends the message that there is no risk from committing crime. A softening of drug crime enforcement which leads to other sorts of crimes to pay for habits and addictions - it's gone so soft we're very lucky we don't look more like Scotland with the drug-taking epidemic. Then you have to layer things on top like normal every day crime isn't sexy enough for police to engage with, for some good reasons and some bad, I totally understand the draw of large, complex, multi-decade investigations but many of those are probably going nowhere and grossly over-resourced (Madeleine McCann, anybody?). Also, yes, spending too much time dealing with nonsense complaints about muh feelings hurt on twitter - regardless of if the police want to police it might be irrelevant - this is why perverting the course of justice is an offence and some high profile prosecutions would sort that out, but we are where we are. Also maybe possibly, frankly probably even, a little bit of imported anarcho- tyranny. I really wish I didn't have to use that term but the facts and behaviours of the police do tend to speak for themselves. Fish rots from the head down - government isn't making sure the police forces are doing what taxpayers are paying for police to do either.

❤

They were bought and paid for xx

The argument against the return of the organ marbles is that if they are returned to Grace then all of the other stolen loot in the British Museum will have to be returned to the rightful owners

Murrays convoluted answer is just sheer nonsense. Britain should return stolen goods as it wasn't their's in the first place. Countries that had their antiquities stolen during the colonial period have full rights to request their return.

Artefacts plundered from nations during the reign of the British Empire should be returned, if the nation of origin asks for them to be returned. Where's the balance in Douglas Murray's piece? Where are the dissenting voices? Oh, it's another monologue...

Elgin Marbles Belong to Greece and if Britain refuses lets point the GUNS

Once again Murray steps into shoes left vacant by the late Christopher Hitchens...

Most comments in favour of the UK's British Museum returning the Elgin Marbles assert an inviolable and innate right of Greece to get them "back" to where they were created. It therefore follows that the original Folios of Shakespeare should come back to the UK from (mainly) Texas. We have been such a pitifully poor country for so long we have flogged our heritage to the highest bidders. Surely that's almost exactly the same rationale as is used to justify the Elgin Marbles be packed off to Greece. Who knows, maybe the Welsh will demand the return of Stonehenge's blue stones hewn out of Welsh quarries before the concept of Wales and England and the UK ever existed.

The people who ask for the return of the Elgin/Parthenon marbles should also ask Russia for the return of the Trojan jewellery to Turkey (they were taken by the Russians in Germany at the end of WWII). Less important? Who can determine that! Or is it because it doesn’t have to do with muh British Empire, colonialism, and revenge. Exactly! Don’t talk about the Elgin marbles but ignore things that would actually be categorized as stolen.

Just listening to Freddie Grey talking to Jacob Heilbrunn about Vivek Ramaswamy - he completely ignores the possibliity of Kari Lake being the VP pick - theres not a cat in hells chance of Nikki Haley being picked over Kari Lake (Nikki Haley is part of the swamp Uniparty - this tells me neither Freddie or Jacob know what hey are talking about

Elgin Marbles: I hope we have taken as hostage an equally desired item from Greece to ensure their return. The Benin Bronzes are seized assets of Slavers. I thought that we were into that now.

Is the British Museum a charity? It the Museum Director a trustee? Then under charities legislation he is duty bound to act in the best interest of the charity and is open to censure and prosecution if it can be proved he has not done so.

The british national identity has been under attack for a long time, and it needs to be reinforced and promoted. How? Certainly not by having a British Museum full of non-british exhibits. Authenticity, history and origin have more value than life itself, they are the cornerstone of the existence of a nation. The Greeks were enslaved during ottoman occupation, therefore no legitimate consent was given for the Marbles removal. Even Byron characterized it a vandalism. Giving artifacts to the countries of origin will enhance and not deplete the UK from its own history. I have the strange sensation that it will be considered a diplomatic loss to give them back, but this mindset proves that the UK doesn't really see the artifacts of the British Museum as nothing more than trophies that a hunter has collected in his career. Maybe Douglas is against this because he sees Greeks as uncivilized, but it is not so. The UK is much more uncivilized because it is a melting pot of immigrants, ideologies, symbols, artwork and is turning more and more into the US. So the bottom line is to give back everything non-british and finally start getting back real british heritage artifacts from the ultrarich americans who - ironically see them as trophies too...

Well Douglas, as much as I admire you I am with the greeks on this. Give them back! As for the Benine stuff; they were a gift, not stolen, so.....

The filth can't be repaired, they're far too mired in excessive corruption: Knox & his covering of their use of SDS agents provocateurs, then retires after lieing to Durham Professional Standards investigation, & straight into 'Community Safety Program' as the number2 to his bent cop number1. Darlington.

How did the Parthenon marbles end up in the British museum? They were stolen. Why is this a laughing matter? Why doesn’t UK send Crown Jewels to Athens? Sorry they were pinched from India! Appalling ……

What they haven't mentioned is the removal since the Sixties of the British right to keep and bear arms. This means that the citizenry can't defend themselves, and thus do part of the criminal justice job by preventing crimes from happening in the first place. I cover all this in my review of Joyce Lee Malcolm's 'Guns and Violence: the English Experience'.

Shapps. FFS.

Breaking news! Katy Balls is running in the 2.30 at Cheltenham. 🐴🐴🐎🐎 5 to 4 odds on favourite.

And yet it is not asked: what right does the British state have to the Elgin Marbles?

I’m not going to pretend otherwise but I don’t give a flying fig about the Elgin marbles. I’d rather watch an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine.

25:21 It's impossible for him to win me over. The way he seized power guaranteed that I will vote against the Conservative Party at every opportunity until he (and those who support him) are gone from the party.

You stole them

I'm gay for men. But only Douglas

Struggling you care about artefacts, frankly.

Love Kate Andrews, America's loss is our gain. Douglas Murray just wants to constantly moan.

You don't HAVE to be a toff to work at The Spectator, but it helps. Run by a Scottish Conservative mafia. Parochial. Predictable takes. Yawn.💤💤

Douglas "pandemics aren't in my wheelhouse" Murray. Ironic that he has written about tyranny in the past, yet when it happened - he stood back and did nothing, but now says he would of preferred herd immunity. Peter Hitchens was right to call him out.

Mr Murray looks odd, botox or too much make up .