Sunday 3 December 2017

Years from now, they'll be asking: "Where were you when ex-Labour minister Alan Milburn quit the social mobility board?"

Alan Milburn - a hugely significant figure
And here's the thing - you'll remember Milburn's resignation instantly, as if you were back there, re-experiencing that momentous event which had the whole of the British nation crowded around their TV sets and mobile phones and iPads and (Get on with it! ed)...Well, anyway, whether you were making a cup of tea when BBC Radio News cut into Farming Today, or were slouched in front of the TV set watching some Mancunian nonentity tellings wildly amusing anecdotes about their "Nan" on Breakfast TV, or popping round to the corner shop for a pint of milk when a distraught stranger ran up to you with tears in their eyes and sobbed "Oh my God! Have you heard? Alan Milburn has resigned from the social mobility board because of the government's lack of commitment to social justice! What's to become of us? Yes, I know he had served his time and was due to be replaced anyway - but, still, it's a terrible shock. How am I going to break the news to my kids? That's Christmas ruined!"

Okay, you might think that four members of the Great and the Good flouncing out of some...



...meaningless committee you'd never heard of - and couldn't care less about now that you have - is possibly the least important news story in the history of the universe, and is, in fact, so deeply and utterly inconsequential that the rumour that Mrs. Iqbal at No. 42 has had to call out the AA because her car won't start - again! - beats it hands down in terms of being of any interest to any sentient being on the face of the planet. But you'd be wrong, because it was the lead item on Radio 4's The World This Weekend, even beating the epoch-defining story that Tony Blair thinks Brexit is a bad thing to claim the top spot on the running order.

Like the vast mass of people in this country, but unlike the editorial staff at BBC News, I really don't give a rat's bum what the former Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has to say about anything. As for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission - seriously? A coterie of self-regarding, gum-flapping, hand-wringing ex-whatevers virtue-signalling like billy-oh while no doubt refusing to countenance any of the politically incorrect actions required to improve social mobility and lessen child poverty (which would include a wholesale reform of the soppingly left-liberal criminal justice, welfare, education, immigration and taxation systems, leading to a clear-out of pious public sector fat-cat troughers and the truffling pigocracy funded by New Labour/Cameron Conservative crony capitalism). 

I was mildly intrigued by Tony Blair and one of his army of superannuated New Labour orks appearing side by side in the first two WTWT headlines: but all became clear when I heard the reason Milburn gave for the lack of "progress" on "social justice". Apparently it's because the government is "too focussed" on Brexit. Ah, right!  The government is far too obsessed with carrying out the democratically-expressed wishes of the British people - which just happen to run counter to the wishes of Alan Milburn - to address more vigorously the concerns of a quartet of unelected do-gooders. Boo Sodding Hoo! 

I might not have been quite so annoyed by this politically-biased nonsense if it hadn't been preceded by the BBC - and the rest of the British media - twice losing its collective mind over Donald Trump (for a change) in the space of a week. There was the mistaken assertion by ABC News that Michael Flynn had made contact with the Russian government on presidential candidate Donald Trump's behalf: ABC later admitted that the approach was sanctioned by President-Elect Trump. This immediately rendered it null and void as a news story, but the tone of our broadcasters and much of the Press after the all-important correction had been issued managed to imply that Trump was somehow still struggling to answer the spurious charges.

Before that, of course, there was the utter hysteria over Trump retweeting some Britain First tweets. Let's make one thing clear: Trump is a loudmouthed boor who habitually fails to engage what passes for his brain before speaking or acting - and it probably wouldn't make much difference if he did. True, this is worrying, given that he's the leader of the world's most powerful country. But it's obvious by now that Trump isn't your typical president, and that, when he's on social media, he (for some reason) seems to imagine he's back at Trump Tower, running his business empire, and that he can damn well say what he likes. I can understand why his legion of political opponents in America would gleefully pounce on his latest Twitter outrage - but I don't quite know why Britain's news media felt it necessary to indulge in a prolonged display of virtue-signalling by pretending that the silly jerk must have known who Britain First are and what they stand for - of course he bloody didn't, because he never bloody does! If the BBC - and most other media organisations - wish to indulge in these pompous fits of rage against the leader of this country's greatest ally, then perhaps they should start giving Trump and his administration credit for the things they're doing right,  just as they should have spent the eight years of President Obama's baleful reign pointing out the many things Saint Barack and his ghastly cronies were doing wrong.

Breitbart's Raheem Kassam was excellent on this subject when interviewed about it on the BBC News Channel:
The only really significant thing about all this - as Kassam mentioned - is the sheer lunacy of the British Prime Minister choosing to pick a fight with the President of the United States over such a ridiculous, footling issue. Unlike Kassam, I don't honestly think Theresa May is deliberately trying to scupper Brexit. But if she seriously imagines that attacking Donald Trump is going to make her more attractive to voters, she's even more out of touch than I'd suspected. As she was so fond of trotting out her catch-phrase, "Brexit means Brexit" until this year's disastrous general election result, perhaps someone could reprogramme the MayBot to respond to questions about anything Trump says or does with "Trump is Trump".  

2 comments:

  1. I was rather hoping that your friend Benjamin Zephyr Zodiac might have penned an occasional poem to mark this seismic blow to our body politic. Sadly it appears not. He may be in mourning.

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    1. It may have been the final straw for Benjy - that, or the news that Brexit talks are heading for Stage 2 after all. Or he could be waiting for the results of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry to unleash his latest majestic diatribe. I've heard a rumour from my sources "on the street" that he's recovering from a massive overdose of weed at the Bide-a-Wee Rest Home for Distressed Gentlefolk With Long-Term Substance Abuse Issues in Budleigh Saltertoin. If so, I hope they sort him out in time for him to deliver a Christmas Message to the Nation to lighten our spirits in these dark days of national crisis.

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