David Starkey

[Halfpenny]

Yep, he's been trolling again. This time, Alex Salmond is apparently the Caledonian Hitler.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04/18/salmond-caledonian-hitler-starkey_n_1435471.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/04 ... 35471.html</a>

Historian Dr David Starkey has compared Scottish first minister Alex Salmond to Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler.

"If you think about it, Alex Salmond is a democratic Caledonian Hitler, although some would say Hitler was more democratically elected," he said.

"[For him] the English, like the Jews, are everywhere" he added to gasps from the audience.

Starkey was speaking at a debate, hosted by the Bow Group think tank, on the teaching of British history in UK schools.

"England has shaped the world and now the world has shaped England" he said, "every other country focuses on its own history and it's absurd that we don't."

Teaching should, he said, "unashamedly focus on political history. Social history is...mere sentiment".

The British needed positive teaching of their history, Starkey argued, to preserve national identity.

"English national identity is too important to be left to the loons of the BNP and the EDL" he said.

"The government is absolutely hamstrung, as was Gordon Brown, in defining what it is to be British" he added.

Starkey lamented that in the wake of Enoch Powell's controversial Rivers of Blood speech, it was "no longer" possible to speak about nationalism.

Tory MP Dr Kwasi Kwarteng, who was speaking alongside Starkey, said there was a greater need for teaching history.

"We're the only country other than Albania that doesn't have compulsory teaching of national history ... we're in an awful place" he said.

Kwarteng suggested there was a "case" for the compulsory teaching of history up to 16 years old.

Starkey is no stranger to making controversial comments. Last year he was criticised after claiming "the whites have become black", when discussing the London riots. He also described Scotland, on BBC's Question Time, as a "feeble little country".

Seriously, he's a clever man but he doesn't half shoot himself in the foot, whether it's his arrogant attitude or simply driving buses through the lines of what is acceptable to say in public!

 

[Josh Blue]

He is not smart.

 

[dazdon]

I like him.

He upsets the radical feminists so i'll overlook his foot in mouth moments.

 

[Halfpenny]

He is not smart.

I can't stand him, he says some horrific things such as this. He's supposed to be an intellectual guy as a historian but he can't see the line. Some of the things he says are absolute madness.

 

[BoyBlue_1985]

He is not smart.

Well he is a Dr of some kind so you have to have some brains to do that in any form

 

[BWTAC]

He is not smart.

Why? He has a first, a Phd and a Fellowship at Cambridge to suggest otherwise, or do you just have differing opinions to his? To suggest he is not "smart", i take you are more well read and have better qualifications and credentials on the subjects he talks about?

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I think he is a **** and a bore.

That said, my wife works in TV and he came along and was a 'talking head' on a programme she was involved in and said he was an absolute gent and unlike other historians wasn't bothered about a fee, so maybe acting the **** is all for show.

 

[dazdon]

Gays are a bit like Jews. We’re an extraordinarily odd minority that’s had a totally disproportionate effect intellectually and culturally. But now homosexuality has been normalised, and in some ways that’s a tremendous loss.

This is a Starkey quote and his opinion may be distasteful to some but it's his opinion.

And I suspect there is a LOT of thought before he uses soundbytes like this.

 

[simonr555]

He's a ****. A clever ****. But still a ****.

 

[Josh Blue]

He is not smart.

Why? He has a first, a Phd and a Fellowship at Cambridge to suggest otherwise, or do you just have differing opinions to his? To suggest he is not "smart", i take you are more well read and have better qualifications and credentials on the subjects he talks about?

No I don't have the qualifcations but I am not a narrow minded narcissist who interupts people and doesn't allow others to have opinions.

He comes out with some outrageous theories that he backs up with "history" but at the same time he will leave out huge chunks of history because they are a inconvenience to his theory/agenda.

No doubt he has read alot of stuff and has acquired alot of information but that doesn't make him smart when he uses the information to support the bonkers ideas of a mad man.