PERIGO'S PERSPECTIVE: Taking In Hussies, Handel, J.K. Rowling And The End Of Freedom Of Speech In Scotland

Preliminary back-and-forth with Paul, then:

How edifying and gratifying to close last week's pre-Easter homily with the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah. A reassuring symbol of humanity at its finest. You'll know our great civilisation — THE greatest —  is at an end when The Messiah ceases to be performed annually, and there's no Last Night at the Proms featuring Rule Britannia, Land of Hope and Glory, Jerusalem, and the like.

Handel himself was by all accounts a bit of a hoot and not at all what we would now call Woke… Prolific, hot-tempered, blunt, witty, expansive in many senses: a famous cartoon has him with the face of a pig, sitting on a wine barrel and surrounded by food. No vegan teetotaller, this one. 

He was much vexed by two of the women who sang in his many operas — actual women, not the castrati of the period, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. 

According to Harold C. Schonberg, “Cuzzoni was short, fat, ugly, ill-tempered, and no actress at all. … Bordoni, on the other hand, was attractive and, for the day, an accomplished actress. Naturally, the two women hated one another, and things came to a climax in June, 1727, with a performance of Bononcini's Astianatte. 

“Spurred by their supporters in the audience (Bordoni was a favourite of the Burlington faction, and Cuzzoni's admirers were part of Lady Pembroke's Circle), the two women made for each other with curved talons, and a great fight ensued, complete with screaming and hair-pulling. The newspapers had a great time with it, and a pamphlet was published giving a blow-by-blow report on the ‘full and true account of a most horrible and bloody battle between Madame Faustina and Madame Cuzzoni.' The pamphlet proposed that the two ladies fight it out in public. Handel happened to be the impresario that immortal evening, He roared that Cuzzoni was a she-devil, that Faustina was Beelzebub's spoiled child, and that both were hussies.”

Hussies! Hussy?!  A girl or woman who behaves in a disrespectful or inappropriate way or who has many casual sexual relationships. A minx, a Jezebel, a trollop, a strumpet!

Handel might well be arrested nowadays for such language were he to slip over to Scotland, where a new Hate Speech law came into effect on April 1. It looks like a bad April Fool's joke, but it isn't.

The law creates a criminal offence of “stirring up of hatred” on the basis of age, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and transgender identity. Actually, though, gender itself is left out, so “hussies” might still be permissible after all. The omission has drawn screeching from Woke-Fascists, and Scotland's Community Safety Minister says the quacking is valid and a separate law should now be made banning misogyny. A special law just for brick port-a-loos!

I feel the need to reiterate at this point that this was not an April Fool's joke.

Someone convicted of stirring up hate under all those other categories could face a fine and a prison term of up to seven years. All very familiar, isn't it?!

Author J.K. Rowling, who lives in Edinburgh, has taken it on directly. She has dared police to arrest her for… misgendering.

“Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal,” she tweeted. “I’m currently out of the country, but if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new Act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.”

Rowling had posted pictures of 10 high-profile trans people on Twitter and mocked their claims to be women. They included Isla Bryson, who was initially sent to a women’s prison after being convicted of two rapes.

She also included TV personality India Willoughby. Woke-Fascists had already unsuccessfully attempted to have Rowling arrested under existing laws for “misgendering” after she publicly called Willoughby a male. Which he is.

Rowling said: “The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.”

Willoughby tweeted back: “What a sad, pathetic sight. The best-known author in the world, sitting up all night to write a mega-long troll post about me because she’s consumed by a hatred of trans people. Completely deranged.”

Who exactly is deranged, dear?

To his momentary credit, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, normally a castrato, has backed Rowling, saying: “People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology. We believe in free speech in this country, and Conservatives will always protect it.”  Alas, that's not true of course.

Scotland's First Minister, Humza Yousaf oversaw the passage of the hate crime legislation in 2021, when he was justice secretary in Nicola Sturgeon’s government, but it has only now come into force as Police Scotland said it needed time for training.

Jim Sillars, the SNP’s former deputy leader, has launched a campaign to repeal the fascism.

He says: “Humza Yousaf’s Hate Crime Act inflicts a deep wound on the face of Scottish society. Today, on their own admission, Police Scotland will translate itself from a service into a force for one particular purpose, the pursuit of people who speak their minds. How has Scotland, the seat of the Enlightenment, come to this?”

Yousaf says he “couldn’t disagree more” with a warning from the Scottish Police Federation that the Act was a “recipe for disaster”.

Asked about Rowling’s case, he said the police would investigate if a crime had been committed and the Crown Office would decide “if there is a sufficiency of evidence to charge.” Clearly nudging them in the direction of prosecution. What an obnoxious twat. Fortunately, the police have just declined to prosecute. But the law remains on the books!

That, ladies and gentlemen, was what Jacinda Jackboot was seeking to impose on New Zealand. It's what Ham Ass stooges want everywhere.

Speaking of such enemies of free speech, some screeching, squawking, fry-quacking Ham Ass stooges in Londonistan over the weekend must have gone to the same elocution school as New Zealand's Woke-Fascist TV political editors.

Oh dear!

The streets once walked by Handel were swarming with hussies like that over Easter. Over Easter! Shame on Great Britain for allowing itself to become Pathetic Britonistan. Beijing Biden the Bribed Bastard meanwhile declared Easter Sunday Trans Visibility Day, and Ham Ass stooges disrupted services at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York while Biden supporters just sat there and lapped it up. How long, I wonder, do they imagine trans people would last under Ham Ass?!

Humza Yousaf doesn't face an election till 2026. Let us hope he goes the way of Jacinda Jackboot before then, realising that if he doesn't, Scottish voters will reclaim some pride and self-respect along with their free speech and tell him to shove his Allahu up his Akbar!

That was Scotsman Kenneth McKellar singing Where E'er You Walk by the cosmopolitan German Englishman, Handel. Normally that would be full circle, and I'd leave it there, but I feel it would be remiss not to go full Scottish in closing, as Mr McKellar brings us the beautifully Unwoke words of that great devotee of wine, women, song, Tom Paine and the Enlightenment, Robbie Burns… who surely would be horrified by the barbarians now inside the gate!