David Bullard has been fired by the Sunday Times. Ostensibly, it was over last Sunday’s column, in which he envisioned what South Africa would look like had it not been colonised by the Dutch and the English. His vision isn’t exactly complimentary.

The column is condescending at best, and probably racist. But so what? It stokes debate, and that debate should not be about freedom of speech.

Before I talk about that debate, the obvious question is why fire Bullard for being offensive now? Hadn’t the Sunday Times’s editor, Mondli Makhanya, read him before? Doesn’t an editor who once bravely put “Manto: a drunk and a thief” on the front page agree with Salman Rushdie that without the freedom to offend, freedom of speech ceases to exist? Maybe he does. But Bullard made the fatal mistake of offending his paymasters. For that, of course, they have every right to tell him to sod off and exercise his freedom of speech elsewhere.

Except that his paymasters deny that’s why they’re firing him. Makhanya says his 19th century views are unacceptable in the newspaper. Yet Bullard has been cultivating that persona in the very same newspaper for years. He unapologetically trades on his arrogance, his Victorian superciliousness, and his ability to provoke outrage. If he steps over lines, it’s because with his dandy sartorial style, his whisky-drinking tastes and his cigar-smoking condescension, he consciously — and self-consciously — stations himself above arbitrary lines drawn by the hoi polloi.

It is certainly not the first time Bullard has been racist or offensive. Why didn’t he get fired before? The only other possibility that springs to mind is that the political class strongarmed the newspaper by threatening to pull advertising. That is, of course, their right, but it would genuinely surprise me if Makhanya, who stood firm in the face of far heavier political pressure caved over something as inconsequential as a column by a known stirrer. My bet is Makhanya was just waiting for an excuse to fire Bullard after the latter’s scathing attack on his bosses in the recently-launched media magazine Empire — an attack he has exploited on several public occasions to arouse shock and mirth. Sarah Britten speculates along the same lines, and reckons his axing can only be good for Empire. Bullard himself agrees. (I share Britten’s wish that Empire would get around to discovering these newfangled intarweb tube things. On the other hand, we all know what Bullard thinks of the internet. And in the interest of full disclosure: I too write for Empire.)

For my part, I agree with Rushdie. If Bullard’s column is racist, or offensive, or contains 19th century views, so what? You’re free to disagree. In fact, it’s far better for racism to be declared openly and discussed freely than to be suppressed. Just because it’s taboo in public discourse doesn’t mean it’s not flourishing in pub discourse. Or should that read “festering”?

What will get lost in the noise is the debate Bullard appeared to be trying to stir. Not very well, in my view. He expressed the argument in an offensive, condescending way, but there is a valid debate to be had about the modern tendency to dismiss colonialism as mere racist oppression and exploitation. It definitely was, in many cases, mercenary and ruthless. The degree of depravity differed from one colonialist to the next, and the English were far from the worst.

Many writers take the line that colonialism in India, for example, had substantial benefits, in addition to the well-known drawbacks and injustices. Those writers are not only Western apologists for racist oppression, but also Indian economists, historians, and prominent politicians, writing about their own country. For all the harm colonialism did, they argue, it also brought with it civil institutions and infrastructure. India can thank Britain, they say, for its liberal education, modern jurisprudence, and functioning civil service bureaucracy. Once liberated, it was on these institutions that economic progress could be built.

Reasonable arguments can be made on both sides of this issue. As Bullard shows, the same goes for unreasonable arguments. But that his column was grating and offensive does not mean it’s not a debate worth stirring. Yes, it means suspending conventions about what is politically correct. It means challenging well-established orthodox thinking on issues of history. It means treading sensitively around, and not being over-sensitive to, issues of race and oppression. It means rejecting the victim complex to which Bullard refers in his final paragraph, as well as the instinctive slam-dunk defense offered by perceptions of racism. But is it a debate worth suppressing?

I don’t think so. Frederick Douglass, a former slave, once expressed the 19th-century view that “[t]hose who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the roar of its many waters.”

It appears that view is also too 19th-century for Mondli Makhanya’s Sunday Times.

Update at 21:00 on 11 April 2008: If you’re interested in David Bullard’s columns, I hope you have bookmarks. Because you aren’t going to find them — not even previously published ones — at The Times website. They appear to have been orphaned. They still exist. For now. The link to his column in the copy above still works, and so do the links from that page, but without an article ID number, David Bullard is just a bad memory for the Sunday Times.

Update at 22:00 on 11 April 2008: Bullard responds, inserted in the copy above.

Update at 13:00 on 12 April 2008: The Saturday Star was quick to exploit this competitive opportunity, and published a page three article on Bullard in today’s first edition. It isn’t yet available online, but an image of the page is here. In it, he is quoted as saying that the column was merely an excuse for Makhanya to get rid of him, after he refused to apologise for claiming, in his Empire column that standards at the Sunday Times and other Avusa publications were in decline. After all, he says, his brief was to be “controversial” and “outrageous” and “to upset people” on a Sunday. “I was found guilty in the kangaroo court of Mondli Makhanya,” the piece quotes. Marvellously in character, he is pictured in a flashy pin-stripe suit and tie at the opulent Rand Club. “Wait until you see the next article in Empire,” he promises, “because now I don’t have to hold back at all.”

Update at 12:00 on 13 April 2008: Prompted by my response to Dawn in the comments section, I posted a short follow-up piece on the debate I believe Bullard was trying to stir: In defence of colonialism.

Update at 15:00 on 13 April 2008: Bullard’s Empire column, along with a full complimentary issue, has been published online. I noted it here. The direct link to his column is here.

A core function of government is to protect the person or property of its citizens from unlawful infringement by other citizens. This can be done privately, of course, but the point is to have an independent third party assigned to protect citizens from each other, to amicably resolve disputes, and to act against those who infringe on the rights of others.

When a government takes it upon itself to protect citizens from their own stupidity, carelessness and recklessness, however, things get rather silly. First, you’ll be told that you can’t smoke, because your likely early death doesn’t make up for your medical care, paid for by others. Then, you’ll be told that you can’t eat this or that variety of fat, because some fraction of the population (probably not including you) is overweight and too lazy to do something about it.

Eventually, they cover objects in foam padding, to prevent you from carelessly injuring yourself if you don’t look where you’re going. The Daily Mail deserves a nod for referring to “the dangers of ‘unprotected text’“.

Is Britain turning into a taxpayer-funded padded cell? A communal, egalitarian bedlam?

Oh, how I wish I were a British taxpayer, so my government could also buy me plums like Northern Rock. The bank says it’s “business as usual”. Of course. What bank doesn’t say that? I’m sure all blue-blooded Englishmen are just rushing to open accounts and refinance their mortgages.

The UK government says “In the current market conditions we do not believe that they (the bids for the company) deliver sufficient value for money.” Effectively, Richard Branson’s bid (and that of management) condemns the plum as a lemon. He wishes the bank (fare-)well.

Nevermind wishing I were a British taxpayer (after all, my government owns lots of juicy fruit, such as Eskom, parts of Telkom, Infraco, and South African Airways). What I really wish is that I were a British banker. Imagine. Set up a bank. Take whatever risk you like. Undercut your rivals. Crush them! Be daring, be bold! Because if you win, you’ll be up to your eyeballs in fame and fortune. And if you lose, well hey, Gordon Brown’s party will take the disaster off your hands. What a steal!

I’d love to hear why the British government does not think nationalising Northern Rock introduces moral hazard throughout the British banking sector — why it doesn’t think this decision will poison the quality of risk-taking in the UK.

What a sad day for the City.

It may be fashionable to sneer at dumb Americans, but it seems something is amiss in British education too. It is producing the sort of intellectual midgetry that, were it able to read, would file this book in the fiction section:

A classical schoolmaster might have responded: “This is the sort of arrant nonsense up with which I will not put,” and launch into a pedantic discussion about whether that quotation is both accurate and correctly attributed.

It would hardly occur to him to take the error seriously, and point out that Winston Spencer Churchill, a storied figure who was once voted the greatest Briton ever and to whom an improbable wealth of fictional feats and witticisms were attributed, was no storybook character.

Yet this is what 23% of Britons believe. And how do you think they might classify the following?

You guessed it. A staggering 58% would look for this character on the history or biography shelf, knowing full well that Sherlock Holmes and his dear Dr Watson inhabited 221B Baker Street in the late 19th century.

These are among the dispiriting results of a survey of 3 000 Britons, commissioned by UKTV Gold.

Florence Nightingale, the Lady with the Lamp, was dismissed as fiction by a quarter of respondents. Presumably they think the Crimean War was just a setting for a Tennyson poem. After all, who’s so stupid they think a real fellow named Cardigan would charge a real place called Balaclava? Duh!

Almost half thought Richard Cœur de Lion (King Richard I of England, Richard the Lionheart) was a fictional knight and monarch, famous as a character in the fantasy stories of the Crusades.

Unlike King Arthur, who was real, say two thirds of Britons. Everyone knows he lived at Camelot, had a sword named Excalibur, and used to sit at a round table with Queen Guinevere, giving knightley orders to his buddies Gawain and Galahad and her buddy Lancelot.
James Bigglesworth, the ace pilot and hero of the British Empire affectionately known as “Biggles”, was history, according to a third of survey victims. Ninety-eight paperbacks’ worth of genuine history every kid should learn.

Robin Hood? Real, lived in Sherwood Forest, robbed the rich to give to the poor, say half of Britons. The Mona Lisa? A historical figure, a third of them think. Eleanor Rigby? Yup, she’s real too, reckon almost half of the respondents.

Reports UKTV Gold: “Over three quarters of the nation (77%) admitted to no longer reading history books, or watching historical programmes on television (61%).”

You don’t say?

A lot of South African politicians and public officials can take a lesson from Peter Hain’s resignation today. According to Sky News:

Cabinet Minister Peter Hain has resigned after the Electoral Commission announced it had referred the issue of undeclared donations to his deputy leadership campaign to the police.

Mr Hain said: “In view of the Electoral Commission decision today, I will be resigning to clear my name.”

The Prime Minister has accepted his resignation. […]

Sky News Political Editor Adam Boulton said: “Peter Hain has had to come back repeatedly and correct what he has been saying.

“At best he has not been on top of what is going on in terms of fund-raising, at worst, he has been less than frank about what is going on.

“That is what appears to have convinced Gordon Brown, or indeed, Peter Hain himself, that his position is untenable.

“This is a serious blow to the Government.”

He claims innocence, citing mere administrative oversights. He was a respected member of cabinet, in charge of a large, important ministry, and politics was his life.

Yet he didn’t wait for the police investigation to start. He didn’t wait for formal charges to be filed. He didn’t wait to be found guilty in a court of law. He didn’t wait to be fired by the prime minister. He offered to resign, on the spot. No ifs, buts, or maybes. And they still call it “incompetence, economic turmoil and political sleaze”.

Here, sleaze is the order of the day, and an honourable resignation seems to be the last thing on the minds of our gravy train passengers.

Granted, were its members to follow the example of the corrupt British captalist imperialist pigs, the ANC National Executive Committee would be sorely understaffed. The South African cabinet would be gravely depleted. On the other hand, imagine the many new job openings the government could claim credit for creating!

Lest you think the growth in obesity is a big problem, in England, it is no more serious than global warming. According to this politician, weight change has a lot in common with climate change. Obesity, like the weather, appears to be a big scare used by British politicians to swindle the public out of more of their heard-earned cash, as punishment for using the tax-funded healthcare system inefficiently.

The public health threat posed by obesity in the UK is a “potential crisis on the scale of climate change”, the health secretary has warned.

Alan Johnson said the magnitude of the problem was becoming clear for the first time and “it is in everybody’s interest to turn things round”.

You missed the magnitude of the problem? Were you staring at the sky? Oh, wait…

Details have emerged of a government study which says half the population could be obese within 25 years.

Ministers are drawing up a long-term action plan to tackle obesity.

Ooh, long-term action plans! Wonder what ministers would do without all these potential crises on the scale of climate change.

The study showed there had to be “further and faster” efforts beyond existing anti-obesity measures to encourage exercise and healthy eating, Mr Johnson said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has backed a long-term action plan to fight obesity, funded by money earmarked in Tuesday’s Comprehensive Spending Review.

Taxes; drain; pour. And if you are healthy, and look after your weight, and eat a balanced diet, and waste an hour a day exercising, tough. You still get to pay because the government thinks it is their responsibility to tell other people to exercise and eat healthy. You still get to pay the minister who uses your overweight neighbour as an excuse to rob you blind.