From ice to fire... now Dartmoor blazes
Libby mum’s poignant admission as murderer is jailed
A THREE-mile-wide fire rips through Dartmoor yesterday as Britain shivers in the Big Freeze.
Fire brigade chiefs said they had no idea how the fire began and they were waiting until this morning to continue their investigations.
Crews from Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service remained in place overnight to undertake a
“watching brief from various vantage points”.
A spokesman said: “We remain at the scene, watching and containing the fire.
“We will assess how to proceed when daylight returns, when there is more visibility and firefighting can continue.” Rob Steemson, Dartmoor National Park emergency officer, said park rangers were also in attendance.
He added that strong winds were pushing the fire further across the moorland.
The blaze was first reported near Tavy Cleave, a few miles north-east of Tavistock. Last night the fire officials lashed out at sightseers who had gathered to take snaps.
A tweet said: “This is extremely dangerous and certainly not an essential journey. Please stay away from the area for your own safety.”
The fire is on a remote stretch of the moorland, and no residents or animals have been injured, according to local reports.
IF YOU have ever wondered where Britain and indeed the whole world would be right now had it not been for the wartime leadership of Sir Winston Churchill, then finally you can relax. Because it can now confidently be asserted that Churchill made no difference to our epic struggle against Nazi Germany, leaving us free to revile him for not having subscribed during his lifetime to the trendy “woke” notions of the current age.
Our great redeemer from the cult of Churchill-worship is Kehinde Andrews, a professor of Black Studies, who told an online debate organised by Churchill College, Cambridge, no less, on Thursday night: “I’m pretty sure that if Churchill wasn’t in the war it would have ended the same way.”
So stand down all those phalanxes of learned historians who have noted the galvanising impact of Churchill on the British war effort and political opinion in America too. Mr Andrews says he reckons it would have been alright on the night anyway so, yes, that’s the end ofWinston.
This leaves us free to agree with Mr Andrews – or perhaps not – about many other important things. For instance, that it is beyond debate, he says, that Churchill was a white supremacist and that “the British Empire was far worse than the Nazis”.
WERE this level of idiocy a one-off from the modern far-Left then perhaps we could afford just to laugh it off. But it isn’t. Increasingly, this level of loathing for our country, its great historic figures and its achievements is par for the course.
After all, this was the week when London Mayor Sadiq Khan unveiled a new taskforce of leftists to review historic landmarks in the capital. Statues, street names and memorials will all come under its gaze. Given that many of its members are already on record expressing their loathing for historical British culture, it does not take a genius to see where things are headed.
The “cancellation” – to use the buzzword – of Churchill is already happening by degrees. His statue in Parliament Square was defaced repeatedly last summer by activists from the Black Lives Matter group, who sought to advance the idea of him being a source of shame rather than pride. At one point the public authorities seemed to go along with the idea, boarding up the monument, but it is now mercifully back on display.
Meanwhile fee-paying Seaford Head school in Sussex succumbed to similar nonsense this week by dropping the name of Churchill from one of its houses after some pupils objected to it.
Anyone with a scintilla of common sense will see that historical figures should be judged according to the standards and values of their time, rather than left-wing notions about what is acceptable nowadays.
So while Churchill certainly did at times express what are now acknowledged as bigoted views about people from some ethnicities, then so did the vast majority of his contemporaries. Perhaps such bigotry was prevalent among non-white groups too. Certainly tribalism and extreme religious intolerance were not rare things in countries colonised by the British.
And before you all faint, it must be disclosed that they were a pretty sexist bunch too back in the day. Churchill himself once had a famous contretemps with the Labour MP Bessie Braddock in which she accused him of being “disgustingly drunk” and he replied that she was disgustingly ugly but at least by the next morning he would be sober while her state of ugliness would be unabated.
It is difficult to imagine a modern public figure surviving such an episode. Indeed, the boss of the Tokyo Olympics has just had to step down for claiming that women talk too much.
BUT things were different then and Churchill’s outlook was relatively unexceptional. The exceptional thing about him was that – whatever Mr Andrews thinks – he was instrumental in defeating the most evil regime the world has ever seen. And that makes him a hero.
Just across the road from the Churchill statue in Westminster is one of Oliver Cromwell who also achieved many great things but who oversaw the most unimaginable cruelties in Ireland. He once demanded that a portrait artist paint him “warts and all”, telling him: “I desire you would use all your skill to paint my picture truly like me and not flatter me.”
We should be aware of the flaws of our great historical figures. But we should also protect them from fools who seek to focus on the warts alone by judging them according to the standards of today, let alone by their own deluded ideas for how the future should be. Only that way will we be able to call a true likeness to mind.
‘This loathing for great historic figures is par for the course’
I’VE lost count of the scientists this week who’ve told Boris, and us, there should be no easing of restrictions until the autumn. Jeremy Farrar, a medical mucker of Chris Whitty and Neil Ferguson, told Boris it would be madness to even start coming out of lockdown because transmission is still high. Professor John Edmunds then piled in and said whatever happens we should all be wearing masks forever and be socially distancing for the foreseeable. He also wants the Rule of Six to stay until the end of time (sorry, the year). And he says we shouldn’t go abroad at all this year.
Others are screaming about variants and how we’ll have to wait months to see how the vaccine works before we can be set free.
Winston Churchill once said of scientists: “They should be on tap but not on top.” Dead right. But Boris has allowed them to get on top by allowing them to dictate government policy.
And it needs to stop. Scientists aren’t politicians, they’re sure as hell not leaders and it’s ingrained into their DNA to have a super-cautious, negative, downbeat view of the world.
Yes, Boris has to listen to them. But he cannot let them believe they’re running the country. Nor can he afford to be crippled by the kind of gloominess and defeatism that is typical of their ilk because his job is about more than Covid infections and deaths. He has the humongous task of getting this country back on the road to economic and social recovery.
And what’s the point of this vaccine rollout if we’re going to be living restricted lives for another year – perhaps forever?
The R rate fell below 1 yesterday for the first time since July, and is estimated to be between 0.7 and 0.9 across the UK. Covid deaths have come down by a third in three weeks.
The case rate is down by 70 per cent, hospital admissions have gone back to early December levels and we’re told vaccines will cut deaths by 88 per cent. Things are changing at lightning speed yet these scientists are talking about restrictions till next Christmas.
Boris told us these vaccines are our ticket for freedom. So, are they not? Has he suddenly discovered something we don’t know?
We’ve vaccinated nearly 14 million people – that’s 1,000 vaccinations a minute – yet restrictions are becoming ever more draconian. This week it was the threat of a ten-year jail sentence for breaking Covid rules on travel. Hell, you don’t get ten years in this country for rape.
The fact is the scientists currently steering Boris don’t understand the economy or how it works. They don’t understand people are hanging
onto their jobs, their lives, their houses, their sanity by a thread. And why would they? Their jobs aren’t on the line and they’ve been on full pay since the start. More restrictions won’t touch them but it WILL push the millions already teetering on the brink over the edge.
Scientists, who never consider the impact of what they’re demanding, don’t want normal life to be resumed until there’s zero Covid but that’s never going to happen because those same scientists told us the disease is now endemic and will come back every winter.
The fact is once everyone over 50 and those
I’M not understanding Downing Street’s explanation of why photographs of Boris’s scampish dog Dilyn were paid for by taxpayers. “They document the work of not just the PM but the whole cabinet,” said a spokesman. So how does Dilyn running around with a stick in the snow do that then?
with underlying conditions has been vaccinated the country should be opened back up and Boris should lead the charge back into normality minus masks and bloody social distancing.
Because the majority of us don’t want to live in the kind of cowed, sterile, joyless world the scientists want us to inhabit. Nor do we want our liberties dispensed with at will by an increasingly authoritarian Government.
The Brexit vote was supposed to be about taking back control but there’s never been a time when people have been less in control of their lives than they are right now.
THE mum of murdered student Libby Squire said yesterday she wants to die they can be together – as her daughter’s murderer was jailed for a minimum of 27 years.
Lisa Squire said she wakes up every day with a “sense of disappointment” that she is still alive.
The nurse, 50, said knowing she was not there when her daughter, needed her most will “haunt me for the rest of my life”.
In a harrowing victim impact statement she read out in court, Lisa added that she “longs to die” so she can “be with her girl”.
Meanwhile, Libby’s dad Russ, 56, said: “I’ve lost my little girl and I’m heartbroken.”
The couple, from High Wycombe, Bucks, spoke before Pawel Relowicz was sentenced to life for raping and possibly strangling student Libby, 21, and throwing her “dead or dying” body into a river in Hull.
Vulnerable
The horrific attack followed years of offending by the married dad of two – whose youngest son was three months old when Libby was killed – including voyeurism, performing sex acts in public and stealing underwear and sex toys.
He admitted nine such offences but police believe there were more.
Yesterday his victims questioned why Polish butcher Relowicz, 26, was “just allowed to carry on targeting vulnerable women”.
They also alleged that police did not treat their reports seriously enough and it was only after Relowicz was arrested over Libby that officers linked him to a string of other sexually motivated crimes.
His first known victim said her life came close to falling apart after Relowicz stuck his head through her open bedroom window to watch her having sex.
The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: “I just hope that the police are able to learn from this horrible series of crimes and are able to catch the next Pawel Relowicz before his actions have deadly consequences.”
She added: “People should be able to report things and have them properly investigated without worrying about assumptions being made, corners being cut or possible victim-blaming. I felt the police needed a bit of a push to take it seriously, take the evidence and take fingerprints.
“This man wasn’t careful about where he left his DNA – I would have thought the technology must exist that when another offence is committed it can flag it up.” Another victim claimed Relowicz was “just allowed to carry on” targeting vulnerable women.
She added: “These things shouldn’t be taken lightly. It might be somebody who’s going to go on to do more similar offences or, as we’ve seen tragically, in this case, something far, far worse.”
Meanwhile Laura Richards, the former head of Scotland Yard’s Homicide Prevention Unit, said: “These cases were not prioritised or seen as a linked series despite being predatory stalking-related offences, which are precursor behaviours to other serious crimes.
“Relowicz should have been arrested far earlier and Libby Squire’s rape and murder may well have been prevented.” But Senior Investigating Officer Martin Smalley said an internal investigation had concluded the Humberside force had done “everything possible” to catch Relowicz before he killed Libby. The monster targeted her as she sat slumped on a street corner after a night out drinking with friends.
After driving her to a remote park he raped her and, it is believed, strangled her then dumped her in the River Hull. Her body wasn’t found for seven weeks meaning a cause of death could not be ascertained.
Yesterday as Judge Christina Lambert QC jailed Relowicz at Sheffield Crown Court, she said he’d become “emboldened” in his offending as he was “confident he could not, and would not be caught”.
She added: “From the moment you intercepted her, Liberty Squire did not stand a chance.”
‘I felt the police needed a bit of a push to take it seriously’