Howard: fishing for net curtains
The issue of foreigners* threatens to override negative Labour campaigning (don’t let the Tories back in, because we’re really not that different and don’t want to make that obvious) and hand a general election victory to the Tories that would be even more unmerited, undeserved and catastrophic than the continuation of the Blair schism. As you were with the media-addicted and a-feared politicians in the UK then.
When Michael ‘my family pulled the ladder up after them, that’s how immigrants should behave’ Howard appears on the screen talking about immigration (and directives already taken by the European Commission with London’s assent,
mostly unreported of course), a creeping sense of doom, gated communities and flowered upholstery suffocates the cognitive faculties of this viewer.
Here are some sums that we/I can make from the Tories’ immigration/asylum conflation:
Swindon x Peterborough – Cocking (annual) = spoilt village green
Migration Watch / Foreign Office x BNP = John Howard
Michael Howard + General Election = shameless xenophobe (desperation2)
Yes it’s no surprise to see Howard, running out of cards to play with four months to go, deciding to deal the joker. Having backed themselves into a right-wing corner on everything else, it is no surprise either to see the government floundering in its attempts to hit back at Howard’s scaremongering. Blunkett’s apparent ability to ‘speak to the working classes’ (as if it’s a different language of grunts and kicks) has departed, along with the government’s licence to issue random bigotry at groups designated and advertised as targets for public hate/scepticism (delete according to postcode) by the Murdoch/Rothermere/Desmond Abuser Triangle.
Norman Tebbitt thinks that “anyone in Zimbabwe would want to come here”. But why are we offered the opinions of an avowedly racist imperial mercenary, when Mickey Howard has framed his latest asylum and immigration conflation with the call for an objective debate of the issues? Probably because the ‘flagging’ national spirit desperately needs ‘the input on this’ of someone who has successfully avoided being placed in the political context that he operates in: far-right/nationalist extremism.
It is obviously dangerous for anyone other than qualified politicians to enter these piss infested waters, but there is only a major problem with immigration and the asylum system if you see Britain as owing nothing to the numerous nations that were brutally pillaged for hundreds of years and on which our (viciously defended by a small section) national wealth, which did, by the way, make it possible to create the NHS in the rationed chaos of post-war Britain. Furthering the Peter Jay analysis, or if you think we would have somehow grown our economy without the assistance of ‘others’.
The sins of the Susans visited on the sons of the Janets aside, this is indisputable, along with the fact of our demography, in the words of Alan Fayed, being “fucked upside down”. The advent of the consul-conscious and burger-brained kid along with a tonne of extra grannies means the indigenous population (anyone born here, or who has lived here for more than 30 years is a rough test I’ll apply here) is not sufficient in number to do all the jobs we need doing in order to perpetuate unsustainable patterns of middle class consumption.
As we are in the era of Alan Milburn’s Vacuous+ approach to political debate (“The next election is about winning a renewed mandate to shape a future in which opportunities for prosperity are available to all those prepared to put in the effort.” He bleated at a recent social enterprise threat session in Manchester), anyone who thinks that wealth should be redistributed is wrong (you should aspire to it and blame no one but your sad, inadequate and thick self if you fail) and if you are here from over there, then best of luck, but we really can’t help you until somebody hurts you.
Politicians are patently uninterested in confronting the comfort blanket of excess consumption of everything until it collapses and they can dance around pissing on the pieces and ensuring that the only people who can vote are those who are rich enough not to pay taxes. And what will be really great for the self-serving political establishment, is that there’ll be a ready made scapegoat in groups of asylum seekers castaway and besieged in Hull, Glasgow, Worthing and other places identified as in need of a physical object for the fears stoked and created by the Abuser Triangle (ok, that last connection is a ramble too far, but I hope the picture is gotten).
Sun columnist Jane Whore this week confirmed why many people felt rather suspicious at the instant excess of self congratulation about donation levels spewed forth on tsunami graves, when she launched into a spirited defence of Michael Howard’s Sunday immigration supplement (bluntline: “It’s not racism…it’s just realism”): “The unerring generosity of the British public can be seen in all its glory in the millions donated to help those who suffered in the Asian tsunami. In times of such great loss and despair we are happy to dig deep and help those in need, regardless of colour, creed or nationality.”
Standard propaganda follows, although, to her credit, she remembers she’s writing in the Sun and not the Mail and avoids using ‘common sense’. Thanks Jane.
* From the Asian subcontinent, Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe only. Does not apply to other countries colonised by the victims of class purges conducted in the UK.
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They don’t play by our rules, part 29: another columnist practices socio-cultural exclusion
From the “Barry Beelzebub” Devil’s Advocate column in the Bristol Evening Post (and syndicated elsewhere) last year. Baz Beelzebub makes Baz Bomingboye’s chutzpah seem palatable. Of course the despicable “chav” is much much worse in his flaunting of brands and labels, use of suppressants like drugs and booze, reliance on TV and other comforts and general braindeadery than the BritKapital Ikea mainstream innit? The only difference I can see is that he airs his questionable worldview more than those who prefer to shut themselves off behind the latest in curtain design (but still have those views):
“I’ve always been somewhat ambivalent about the National Lottery. It’s always struck me as a good way of conning stupid poor people into funding stupid middle class arts projects like that £10,000 upside down dead tree now “growing” in Knowle West, Bristol. (Obviously, us middle classes can’t afford such things ourselves – we’ve been repeatedly mugged by Gordon Brown to the point where prostitution seems the best proposition when it comes to paying the school fees.)
But Mrs B is a convert. Every Saturday afternoon… off she goes to wager her pound... she’ll happily yomp the seven miles or so to the nearest 24-hour ScroteShop (purveyors of microwave meals and cheap cider to the Giro-wielding classes). Once there, she’ll take her place in the lengthy queue amid the slack-jawed, gum-chewing, knuckle-dragging dross of society, the shiny golden coins saved religiously from their crack allowance clutched in their sweaty, tattooed, sovereign ring-encrusted paws.
Bear with me. I can feel a digression coming on. Who are these people, these Burberry Apes with their back-to-front baseball caps, their silly technicolour trainers and their boom-boom Vauxhall Astras with the windows down and the volume set at max? From whence did they spring? We didn’t have them when I was a lad.
Back then, poor people knew their place. They had bread and dripping and coin-operated televisions. They had too many children and a mangle in the backyard. They had vests and chilblains. They had sterilised milk bottles on their kitchen table and torn up newspaper hanging on a hook in their outside toilet. But they knew who they were, and they knew that one day it might be the pools man banging on the front door rather than the tally man. At least they lived in hope, however misplaced it might have been.
Our current welfare classes have no idea how to behave. They somehow think that they’re as good as the rest of us, the honest working people who fund their indulgent, selfish lifestyles. The male of the species is a feckless, workshy scrote, devoid of responsibility or ambition and drip-fed lager and Lacoste by a frightened government. He will never work. His father (should he be able to identify him from the men in his immediate community who are 14 years older than him) never worked, so why should he?
Anyway, having a job means getting up, going to work and following instructions. It requires discipline and a sense of self-respect. Why bother with that when Trisha’s on the telly and the bookies opens in half an hour?
The female of the species is an even more simplistic specimen. With their bejewelled kebab bellies rising unopposed above their elasticated waistbands, their builders’ bottom thongs and their babies with pierced ears, these young women no longer look upon raising a child as a labour of love but as a career opportunity. Kids equal council houses, and benefits, and a lifetime diet of Lambert and Butler and Pot Noodles. And the more the merrier. And if a Friday night fumble with a stranger up a night club back alley, a bag of chips clutched in one hand and a bottle of alcopops in the other, results in yet another pregnancy, then so what? Just don’t spill my chips, sweetheart. And what’s your name again?
And do you know what’s really scary? We’re on a downward spiral. Think about it. The average couple, with two jobs and a mortgage, can barely afford to feed themselves, never mind finance a pair of expensive offspring. Meanwhile the shell-suit mob are at it like rabbits.
Decent society… is under siege from a burgeoning underclass that breeds like rats and is gradually taking over by sheer weight of numbers. And while we might sneer at their so-called fashion sense, at least they’re readily identifiable as they lurk smoking and spitting outside Poundstretcher and Argos. It’s now the school holidays, right? And every day, another school burns to the ground. Who do you think is doing it? Henry and George from the fee-paying prep school? Or Dwayne and Wayne from the excluded gang outside the amusement arcade? I think you know the answer. Maybe we should be more proactive. Perhaps we should have a council-funded ScroteCatcher van that goes around picking up no-marks of either sex and forcibly sterilising them. Then we can look at ways of barcoding their existing offspring at birth, perhaps by inserting a microchip condemning them to lifelong expatriation to Wales.
Maybe we should be even more radical than that. You know those laboratories where evil scientists routinely scalpel the eyelids off kittens for fun? Let’s get them to come up with a kind of Myxomatosis for scrotes. A deadly disease only transmitted through polyester sportswear, microwave chips and tin jewellery.
Let’s face it. You’d only have to plant the bug on a Post Office counter on a Thursday morning and the problem would be solved. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the Lottery…. [goes back to subject, followed by diatribes on the prisoner who struck gold in the Lottery and something unfunny about David Blunkett…]
I mean, what did he see in her? Ah well, love is blind. And anyway, I always thought he was gay. Every time I see pictures of him he’s holding some bloke’s hand. And for a man alleged to be the Government’s most hard-working Minister, whenever he appears on the telly he’s out walking his dog. How hard-working is that?
Barry Beelzebub”
(‘hilarious’ twist on corporate disclaimer follows)
Cull’s feature on the demonisation of the underclass via the mnemonic of “chavs” should be with you soon
Diouf feels a chronic disconnect
“He comes from Senegal (in fact Dakar)
He is pilloried (for being blacker)
El Hadji!
Whoa-woe-wul
El Hadji”
He may have started it at Parkhead but it looks like the baying Britmob is determined to finish it. Senegalese ex-Liverpool striker El Hadji Diouf is a focal point for the recent upsurge in racist and sectarian bigotry (often from his own fans, some of whom booed his equaliser against WBA last weekend). No surprise that the all-white-on-the-night Bluenoses from Saint Andrews were so vocal in their abuse of Diouf – race relations in Birmingham are fragile at the best of times. If he didn’t spit voluntarily, they were as sure as smell going to provoke him enough to bring forth the gob.
I’d also like to know what De Zeeuw said to him the other week, as I doubt Diouf phlegmed in the Dutchman’s face without any prior provocation. The fallout from the Theo van Gogh murder is still being felt in Holland and I suspect hero De Zeeuw whispered some smear about the Moslem character to Diouf before the gob fell forth. (Also interesting to see that Diouf is living up his promise now he is no longer being played on the right-wing by a manager who bought him as a £10 million striker).
Sorry to go on (but I’m going to) about this, but isn’t it a little disingenuous of all football pundits to roll out the condemnatory adjectives ‘despicable’ ‘disgraceful’ ‘disetcerable’ when a player spits at another, when practically every player spends most of the match gobbing manfully all over the pitch? The public and self-conscious refusal to even attempt an explanation as to why Diouf may gob at people who he deems to have offended him helps us to see that ‘football’ in the UK is a blunt tool of social control wielded by deferential idiots like Alan Shearer with a hugely overinflated sense of their own importance. Overpaid, gauche, cultural lapdancers with opinions in their hands and (if they’re really nasty and deserving of ostracising) spit in their heads. Complaints about Cull “privileging blacks” will not be accepted.
And wasn’t that an incredible piece of transparently gutless officialdom at Old Trafford? Market share and a bit of the old ultra-verbals from the railway side at OT will continue to defy the objective application of the game’s laws at that pit of soiled currency. This didn’t actually need cameras, just balls.
