Why the northeast could benefit from the ‘Waitrose Effect’

A Church of England primary school in Richmond, London, has junked Sir Winston Churchill and J.K. Rowling as names for two of its houses and replaced them with the names of the footballer Marcus Rashford and the lady who helped out in the Crimean war, Mary Seacole. This was done, the school said, in order to be ‘more diverse’. Poor old Mary. She is always being roped in, because so many schoolteachers are devoid of imagination as well as being a bit ignorant. Seacole may be regarded as a ‘great Black Briton’, yet she did not consider herself black but Creole and Scottish. A somewhat sharp-tongued woman, she disparaged both black and Creole people, referring to them as, among other things, ‘grinning’, ‘excited’, ‘indolent’ and ‘good-for-noughts’. She also bandied the ‘N-word’ about with a certain abandon and not in an equivocal sense, either.

I daresay there were very good reasons as to why Mrs Seacole should disavow the quarter of herself that was of African descent.