I thought that Raheem Sterling was very impressive on Newsnight. A nice contrast with the horrendous smirker Priti-they-called-me-Paki-in-the-playground-so-I'll-take-no-lectures-from-you, you-black-woman-MP-Patel. Tens of thousands of nearly-all-peaceful demonstrators turned out this weekend. Both the detestable Patel and the even more detestable Johnson chose to come out and criticise the tiny minority whose frustrations came to the fore. Anything to divert from the shit that they've dropped on poorer communities for a decade, and which now exposes them for what they are as we see how much more vulnerable to Coronavirus black people are.

My friend Blair Peach was bludgeoned to death by a policeman forty-one years ago as he was making his way home from a demonstration opposing racism. Kevin Whately, a student from Warwick University, was bludgeoned to death on my birthday in 1974 in Red Lion Square during a protest against the fascist National Front. It was the first demo he'd ever been on. In neither case has anyone been brought to justice. The identity of Blair's killer has been known for decades. We're bloody sick of this stuff and I for one fully support and fully understand the protests about the murder by a policeman of George Floyd. I've hardly touched on this have I, with just those three examples. So I really don't want to hear the rank hypocrisy of the harrumphers who bemoan the abuse and the deserved, and long-overdue, demise of the cheap, shitty statue of a man who connived in the mass murder and the mass misery of black people.