Fight Or Flight

Now, it pains me to sympathise with Howard Flight.

The fact he’s one of Cameron’s Tories implies that he’s almost certainly a silver-spoon-up-the-arse braying muppet who makes Lord Snooty look like a character from the Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

(Maybe, in real life, he’s almost as obnoxious as George Osborne, who I still hate more than anyone else in the world. It’s just something about his face. And his expression. George Osborne is living, breathing, vacantly smirking proof that social status, palpable arrogance, and above average height do not (whatever the PUAosphere may have to say on the matter) automatically equal male sex appeal. Fuck, I’d rather have a night of passion with Dobby the house elf.)

Anyway, when this Howard Flight fellow starts using words like ‘breeding’ about the lower orders (i.e. anyone who allegedly had a grandparent in trade or had to buy his own castle) you’ll automatically file him under T for Tosser.

So it really pains me to say that I feel for the poor old fucker.

Who’s been forced into a humiliating please-don’t-sack-me public apology for stating (albeit ham-fistedly) something that’s so fucking obvious that I defy a five year old retard to question its self-evident truth.

People on long-term benefits have a major financial incentive to have as many kids as early as possible.

And people who are working hard have a major financial incentive to have as few kids as late as possible.

And this is very obviously Not A Good Thing,

As – while what I’m about to say is very obviously not set in stone, and there are many exceptions who’ve simply fallen on hard times through no fault of their own – the former group contains significantly more thick dodgy people who have about as much to offer society as an infestation of plague-bearing rats.

And when you incentivise people like this hideous little rodent-faced mong to reproduce their genes at every available opportunity from the age of twelve and a half - while making the law abiding hard workers too scared to even think about spawning their first Mini-Me till they’re a few short years away from the menopause - you don’t need a degree from the Joseph Mengele School Of Politically Incorrect Eugenics to see what’s likely to happen next.

Call me Mystic Meg, but I foresee significantly more viewers for Jeremy Kyle, significantly less viewers for Jeremy Paxman.

So poor old Howard Flight was absolutely spot on.

But voicing uncomfortable truths or drawing attention to the ten-ton pachyderm crapping on the coffee table is the political equivalent of jumping off Beachy Head (see also Powell, Enoch).

And talking a load of wishy-washy meaningless bollocks is a whole lot safer.

Hence the dizzying amount of non-arguments, non-statements, non-opinions and non-visions floating around in modern politics and lamely pretending to be the real thing.

I’ve come to believe that a political opinion is only a real opinion if a sane, intelligent rival candidate could plausibly argue the opposite in a genuine attempt to win votes. This is how you can tell real opinions from cynical vote-winning crowd-pleasing public-patronising meaningless PR-obsessed bullshit.

For example, take Maggie. And the definitive quote of Thatcherism: ‘there is no such thing as society.’

Many people can and do argue the exact opposite – and are outraged by the very idea. Insisting that yes, there is such a thing as society, and it’s vitally important to a healthy country.

But say what you like about Maggie, she had a true personal vision and she believed in it one hundred per cent. Admittedly the same could be said of Sauron, Lord Voldemort and Adolf Hitler - but credit where it’s due, you can’t fault her on sincerity.

Now, I challenge you to find a similar arguable, controversial quote to define Blairism or Cameronism.

‘Education, education, education’?

Well, I suppose the rival candidate could be standing on the ‘keep ‘em thick, that’s what we say’ ticket. But it’s a bit of a stretch.

‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’?

While the other side says ‘well, this is self-evidently dangerous nonsense. Our party believes in letting dangerous criminals run about murdering grannies in their beds, while doing absolutely nothing whatsoever to prevent the underlying social causes. The more criminals the better, we say. Crime’s great. Vote for us.’

But sadly, there’s a damn good reason why politicians talk such meaningless shite.

Because in this day and age, saying anything that’s sharp, visionary or controversial in any way, shape or form leads to the sort of aggro that Howard Flight’s up to his neck in. And violates the first and only modern political commandment - ‘thou shalt not veer off message, or thine ass is toast.’

Which is why, ninety nine per cent of the time, they’re all so relentlessly on-message it makes your teeth ache.

Assuming that all voters are touchier than a skinned rabbit, catastrophically gullible and have an average IQ of about six.

And generally acting like a nervous try-hard new classroom assistant supervising a class of special needs toddlers, and anxiously pretending to share their love for Iggle Piggle and Barney the Dinosaur.

Take David Cameron in the Sunday papers saying that his whole family loved the X Factor. But it was a bit controversial - he was supporting One Direction, but his daughter Nancy preferred Cher Lloyd.

And I can’t decide whether this would be more unutterably pathetic if it was true or if it was bullshit.

I mean, the thought of a world leader genuinely liking the music of One Direction is pitiful enough.

But the thought of a world leader desperately pretending to admire a talentless fly-by-night teeny-bopper band he secretly despises, like an insecure eleven year old loser trying to ingratiate himself with the cool kids at the back of the bus?

It’s like trying to comprehend the vastness of space, but in terms of infinite lameness.

Again, I feel a wave of nostalgia for good old Mad-Eye Maggie. Admittedly I was quite little in the 80s, but I really can’t imagine her going on the record as saying ‘I absolutely love Debbie Gibson, but Dennis and the kids prefer Bros.’

I feel deeply wistful for a time when politicians were austere elitist grown-ups and happy to be so, and said things they actually believed in. And if some dick in the audience had a problem with that - or thought they weren’t smiley enough, or right-on enough, or down-with-the-kidz enough - that dick in the audience could bite their ass.

Ironically, the one politician who hasn’t succumbed to this horrible try-hard-populist-bullshit-virus – who says what he thinks, wears what he likes, and makes no bones about associating Homer with the Iliad rather than the Simpsons – has far more mass-market popularity than his David Brentishly desperate X-Factor-praising rivals. I refer, of course, to a star so immense that he needs no surname - the one and only Boris.

The electorate might be as dumb as a bunch of little kids in a classroom. But, like a bunch of little kids in a classroom, we can tell when it’s bullshit.

Howard Flight, you have my utmost sympathy.

Good breeding always shows.

J x