UK Current Affairs

Labour Ooze Hatred Of The Successful And Ignorance Of The Working Class

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

James Blunt Chris Bryant MP

 

We may as well just admit it: the Labour Party has a serious class problem.

Just as the memory of Ed Miliband’s hasty sacking of his ally Emily Thornberry for the crime of tweeting a picture of a white van was starting to fade from memory, the new Shadow Culture Secretary, Chris Bryant, found himself on the wrong end of a tongue-lashing from singer James Blunt after appearing to suggest that some of Britain’s most successful performing artists had succeeded at the expense of their working class peers.

Both the Guardian and the Telegraph sum up the story well enough, complete with blow-by-blow accounts of the duelling letters exchanged between Bryant and Blunt. And the Spectator is quite right to point out the irony of a Labour shadow minister decrying the lack of ladders to success for working class artists, when it was the Labour legacy of closing grammar schools that so contributed to the problem of lack of social mobility.

On the plus side, parts of James Blunt’s angry letter resemble the anti-Labour comeback that every Tory wishes that he or she could make, if only they could think a little quicker on their feet:

Continue reading →

It Will Take A Far Better Comedian Than Al Murray To Make A Laughing Stock Of UKIP

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

 

Do you recognise this man?

You may remember him from a short-lived television sitcom a few years back, in which he played the self-important, somewhat sexist and xenophobic proprietor of a scruffy, down-at-heel pub. Yes, this is Al Murray the Pub Landlord.

Murray’s career has consisted primarily of wringing the same laughs out of the same jokes involving the same character, over and over again, year after year; if you’ve seen one of his television or stage shows, you have more or less seen them all. But Al Murray’s latest reinvention comes with a political twist – he is running for election as the Free United Kingdom Party (FUKP) candidate in South Thanet, the same constituency that UKIP leader Nigel Farage is contesting in the general election this May.

Murray’s apparent goal is to win a few more laughs (and a much needed publicity boost) by melding his stereotypical pub landlord persona with Nigel Farage’s pro-British populism, a process that is aided by their shared love of real ale; this is not complex, thought-provoking comedy.

The Spectator provides a taste of FUKP’s manifesto:

Continue reading →

This Week’s Cowardly Assault On Liberty Comes To You Courtesy Of David Cameron

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

David Cameron Paris Attack Charlie Hebdo 3

 

It is nearly one week since murderous Islamic extremists launched their three-day campaign of terror across Paris, striking at one of the core pillars of western democratic society: a free press exercising their fundamental right to freedom of speech. But before the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the kosher market siege have even been laid to rest, David Cameron and his government have started planning their own assault on the rights of the individual and the foundations of a free society.

Of course, David Cameron’s assault is couched in the gentle, persuasive diplomatic language of the politician. There will be no masked men clad in black, no sudden hail of gunfire and no hostages taken – unless you count the right to live our lives free from intrusive snooping from a government that believes it can keep us completely safe, if only it knows enough about us all.

The Guardian provides a good summary of the enhanced laws and powers that David Cameron and the security services want to take for themselves:

Continue reading →

Only Fellow Muslims Can Cure Islam Of Its Fundamentalist Cancer

Samuel Hooper2 Comments
Christian Life Of Brian Charlie Hebdo Terrorism Islamic Fundamentalism
Clear provocation for a fundamentalist massacre

 

Dan Hodges poses an excellent question in his Telegraph column today: what if the Paris terrorists had been Christian rather than Muslim?

He does this to make a point that should be fairly obvious, but which too many of us continually miss – that were the shoe on the other foot, or rather the other religion, it would be unequivocally expected and demanded of moderate Christianity to root out the fanaticism from within its base, without delay and with no excuses or exceptions.

The fact that we add so many caveats and exceptions when making this demand of moderate Islam is therefore, according to Hodges, prima facie evidence that we currently give leeway and grant concessions to Islam that we would not do for any other faith. In Hodge’s imaginary alternate universe:

Then came another attack. Two Christian gunman walked calmly onto the stage of the O2 arena, and machine-gunned to death John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, as they performed their comeback tour. It was, their killers later revealed in a video-taped message, in revenge for the lampooning of Jesus in “The Life Of Brian”. Witnesses at the O2 claimed that as they ran from the stage, the assailants were heard to shout “We have just killed Monty Python”.

A day after the O2 attack, the BBC Today program sent a reporter to High Wycombe, to gauge the reaction of members of the local Christian community. It was “painful people had to die in this way” one interviewee conceded. But the Monty Python cast should not have mocked Jesus. “I love Jesus,” he said. “More than my mum, more than my dad, more than my children.” It was legitimate to insult individuals or people he added, “but not God, not Jesus. We will not allow that. If they are going to do that, that [the attacks] will happen again and again.”

Continue reading →

Let’s Talk About Multiculturalism

Samuel Hooper11 Comments

charlie hebdo multiculturalism

–

Let’s can the fake outrage and acknowledge a hard truth uttered by Nigel Farage

Eager to start making waves early in 2015, UKIP leader Nigel Farage hit the television studios today, giving interviews on Channel 4 News and America’s Fox News, to offer his thoughts on multiculturalism and the reasons behind the barbaric terrorist atrocity at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris.

Predictably, most politicians and commentators immediately rushed to criticise Farage, dismissing his remarks without ever stopping to look for the grains of truth in what he said. Was the intemperate rhetoric about a “fifth column” in Britain alarmist and potentially divisive? Yes, it probably was. But Farage and UKIP have continually raised important questions about the trajectory of Britain that others have wilfully ignored, because they preferred to bury their heads in the sand for short-term political expediency. And the fact that an idea is raised by someone with strong and rather pungent political views does not mean that it should not be discussed.

It should be pointed out that Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow provoked Nigel Farage’s extended comments with a teasing question asking whether the terrorist attack didn’t mean that we needed to tear down our borders completely and become one big happy family, poking the UKIP leader where he was sure to get an impassioned reply.

The key exchange on the Channel 4 News went as follows (it’s quite long, but in it lies the clue to the whole problem with the multiculturalism debate at the moment):

Continue reading →