WHAT REAL WHITE PRIVILEGE LOOKS LIKE

The Colston Four are the most privileged people in the UK right now.

These four individuals: Milo Ponsford, Sage Willoughby, Rhian Graham and Jake Skuse are the most privileged people in the UK right now. Seriously. For they have got off scott free from a crime they blatantly committed, captured on camera, which they didn't even deny doing. When they pleaded "not guilty" in court it was not because they weren't directly involved in the tearing down of the statue of Edward Colston, which constituted vandalism and criminal damage to public property, it was because they exploited a so-called "moral" loophole in the law. So they're privileged they live in a country that has such a loophole...and that's just the beginning.

These middle class, children of means were already privileged in that they don't have to worry about making ends meet, or putting food on the table for their families to eat and that they have time to tear down statues. Of course, this is just a subjective reading of their backgrounds based on their ages, names, appearance and having high status progressive Left beliefs which are usually associated with the sons and daughters of upper middle classes. The reason why this is a subjective reading is because the mighty search engine of Google only promotes puff piece articles about them instead of genuine investigative journalism which would have looked into their backgrounds. It's a real privilege to have a tech giant like Google on your side and lending practical aid in supressing anything negative about them.

They were also privileged that the local police force was compliant and stood by as they committed a criminal act. Privileged that the Chief Constable had their backs on that day, privileged that they had the mayor of Bristol giving them moral support and especially privileged that there's a spineless government in charge of the country right now who drag their feet over matters such as law and order and the preservation of British heritage because the Culture Wars are somehow "beneath them". Maybe it's more luck than privilege that this same government is too frightened of looking bad in The Guardian, circulation 111,000. Then again, you make your own luck and this act of vandalism certainly benefitted from its timing.

OK, so they didn't get a ringing endorsement from The Daily Telegraph, Spectator, Daily Mail, GB News and Daily Express in the mainstream media but they had everyone else supporting them or giving them the benefit of the doubt. Just do a Google search for The Colston Four and there's nothing critical there for the first couple of pages. Enough people in the media have their backs, even though they clearly committed vandalism...now that's what I call privilege.

The privilege extends to the law court. Despite the initial tears and panic about being arrested in the first place....I mean, after all, they thought they wouldn't be held accountable not after the way their own police stood back and subsequently took the knee. But they shouldn't have feared the process, after all they're privileged. Privileged enough to have mama and papa's funds to help cover the court costs, privileged enough to get people donating their money to a defence fund that wasn't really needed. Privileged enough to get Banksy to donate and design a T-shirt for sale to help them. And with all these funds they could hire them the slickest lawyers since O.J. Simpson's "Dream Team" who in turn could produce a star witness in activist masquerading as a historian, David Olusoga. And fortunate to have a compliant and easily bullied jury to turn in the "correct" verdict. The privilege goes on and on.

...and to the judge himself, who urged the jury to listen to Mr Olusoga's emotionally pitched testimony fuelled by the most cherry-picked evidence to damn Colston and the people who funded and erected his statue, and to put this testimony well above actual evidence such as the four being caught on camera committing a criminal act. And how privileged was it that the hate crime laws could be expanded this time to include something that was done over a century before hate crime laws existed? Now, according the defence, the judge and Mr Olusonga, when the citizens of Bristol erected the statue in 1895 it was a deliberate hate crime directed at black people. When you can get actual history rewritten and the law repurposed to suit your criminal defence case, you're privileged.

Hate Crimes are the only laws in the UK designed to benefit one side of the political aisle at the expense of others and what a privilege it is to be a Left wing activist in the 2020s where you can profit from these laws at the expense of truth and reality. The Colston Four will probably go on to enjoy a period of success and affirmation in progressive circles, which at this time includes most of the media, the civil service and the chattering classes. They will find lots of doors being opened to them because we live in a time where having a high status opinion can beat the legal system. Not even Prince Andrew is getting off that easily...again, to get the rub of the green more than a member of the Royal Family: Privilege at an all time high.

Maybe that completely unearned privilege will remain for them, or maybe the Home Secretary will, for once, back up her rhetoric with actions and push for an appeal or tackle hate crime laws. Maybe the Prime Minister could stop depending on his SPADS and experts for a moment to give some leadership on this matter before this "privilege" becomes a free for all on Britain's heritage? Maybe, but for now the Colston Four can bask in their criminal privilege safe in the knowledge that the entire deck of cards was stacked in their favour and that there are enough useful idiots out there to claim the deck was stacked against them.

We'll see how far this privilege extends in the near future. There are many who fear this will be the start of a nationwide binge of iconoclasm as statues will be vandalised, place names changed and history altered to suit a narrative. The excellent and admirable Save Our Statues campaign will have their work cut out trying to prevent such destructive acts without any backing from the law or government. Those of a socially conservative inkling will also find out whether they too are privileged if they try to go after the statue that sits atop Karl Marx's grave, or the statue of Friedrich Engels or even the mural of Che Guevara that lies close to where Colston's statue sat in Bristol. I predict that the hate crime loophole will somehow not apply when it comes to the atrocities of Communism, even if those said Communists were themselves racists, homophobes and sexists.

On a sobering note, none of the Colston Four's actions will benefit black people in the UK one iota. It won't stop the stabbings and murders in the inner cities. It won't address the lack of economic or employment opportunities. It won't solve any housing problems, problems with fatherlessness or drugs. All that money Banksy made on the Colston Four's defence won't find its way to addressing the very real and very tangible problems faced by young black and white men every single day. Instead, Banksy, the chattering classes and the media chose to give their time, money and affirmation to those who didn't need it nor deserve it. And not one of these fine modern day paragons of progressivism will have given as much of their own fortune to benefit their community as Edward Colston did.