You are not your brother’s keeper. Its official. He does shit; you’re not to blame. Why would you be? Ain’t fair to state otherwise. So why are you responsible for a great great great great great great grandfather? Who lived hundreds of years ago, you never met and, other than some much-diluted DNA, you have nothing in common with. Nah, nuffink to do with me.

Unless the ‘me’ in question is rich. Or ennobled. In which case this bizarre statute of limitations is extended infinitely and all descendants can be held responsible and punished for all eternity.

Like poor (ish) Laura Trevelyan. She’s a BBC journalist who happens to have had a very rich descendent back in the 1700s. Turns out, old gran-pappy Trevelyan was a slaver, so Laura duly gave 100 grand to some cause or other, to send some slaves back, return them home, or whatever this money is supposed to do. But now they’ve found he was also a big player in the Irish famine of seventeen hundred and whenever, in which tens of thousands of Irish people died. Not even slaves! But dead, just the same. And this man, the governor of Irish things, or minister for food or whatever, at the time, said that the famine was God’s punishment to the Irish. For… being Irish, or… well, in need of punishment either way. A perfectly reasonable thing to say, IN ITS DAY, I’m sure. Well, fairly sure. So now the Irish want reparations for the famine from the Trevelyans. And whilst we’re there, and they’ve got the cheque book out, I think I was wronged by a Trevelyan once, back in the day. 1856 it was, I remember it clearly. Uncle Hershel was walking along Warsaw High Road and he got attacked by a pogrom led by a Trevelyan and they made his tsitsit dirty.

I sort’a get the pulling down statues bit. Long as its done with agreement by all parties. Although we all have skeletons in our closets. Its a bit ‘judging what was done then by our standards now’, but I get the upset such things can cause.

But can you start moaning to people in 2023 about stuff their ancestors did in 1755? Its like a little girl going up to Joey and demanding his lollypop because of what his grandfather did to her grandmother at a party in Gants Hill in 1974.

It was never proven.

Happy Monday

A xxxx