Guardian Extracts Urine from Readership

Anyone seen this bizarre parody of a Daily Mail columnist over at the Graun's site? As if their readers are going to be fooled into thinking he could win an award for commenting on stuff. I will now proceed to the snark.

The reason Britain has been so attractive is its long tradition of political tolerance. This is history Britain ought to be proud of, even if it has been abused by people such as Karl Marx.

Heh. It's a good opener, 'cos then you just know teh stupid will only get hotter...

Next:

To see what a society looks like when tolerance goes wild, observers only have to look at southern Europe or much of the third world. China shows what a socially tolerant society looks like. While China is not tolerant of political differences, the people are generally tolerant of behaviours that would not be acceptable in Britain.

You're right, it's like a different country or something.

He then proceeds to bollock 'the Chinese' for several paragraphs. I actually think the way that he assumes a nebulous notion like 'tolerance' is going to be a useful analytical tool in sociological assertions is close to cute.

After which, there's some praise for Dawkins-style intolerance for a bit, including some fairly sinister praise for the Inquisition and a barely concealed yearning for torture. Then it's back to China* bashing:

It may well have been the tolerance of traditional China that meant the scientific revolution never took place and hence China did not industrialise.

You're right, that's it - 'tolerance' did it! For better analysis see here or here:

Jacques Gernet notes, 'The age of the warring [Chinese] states is one of the richest known to history in technical innovations', with the 'development of a considerable trade in ordinary consumer goods ... The richest merchants combined such commerce with big industrial enterprises' [...]But the independence of the merchants-entrepreneurs as a class was curtailed. They were unable to establish themselves as a force with their own centres of power, as they were in the cities of late Medieval Europe. Instead, they were increasingly dependent on the state bureaucracy.

(Harman 2008:55, 59)

It's a lot more complicated than that of course, but this is an excerpt from an actual analysis involving the actual material conditions of society, rather than the arrogant fart-gas of a toryboy blowhard, which is the point.

Litter is not unavoidable and should not be tolerated. The waste of billions of pounds in badly designed IT projects is not a fact of nature but a blot on society we choose to accept rather than challenge. We can find our inner Inquisitor and we should express disapproval of behaviour that we do not need to tolerate. Britain can be the tidy, clean and safe place it was 50 years ago if only we, as a society, have the will to embrace intolerance for antisocial behaviour. [Emphasis added]

*Awooga! Awooga!* Reference to 50s utopia detected, commander! Dradis confirms one HYS commenter closing fast! Begin jump prep to SYB immediately!

It's a shame he peters out right there though. The last paragraph is, of all the lame cop-outs he had to choose from, a Tutter's Charter:

So this holiday everyone should express a little mild disapproval when someone cuts you off on the road, or towards a youth who puts his feet on the railway seats or towards a tourist talking loudly in an art gallery.

What kind of armchair fascist are you, MoveAnyMountain? If you want to tell people how to live their lives, you should be indignantly tweeting at the very least...

*And no, this isn't because I have any great love for China. It's because this fool fails to heed the most powerful axiom of our times.

Umm, Hi.

I wonder where that charming young man's got to, you've been thinking. Without those mots justes, my day is simply not complete.

Well, sorry for not calling. I've been out a lot recently you see.

Doing what? Well, I'll tell you.

Firstly I've been working a lot of hours, which has a funny way of leaving you knackered.
Secondly I've been going to quite a lot of meetings recently (see previous posts). Last week I went down onto a picket as well, which was a great experience. If you've never been before (none of my previous employers have been enthusiastic about the concept of unions), you definitely should. It's a great chance to see the strike from the striker's point of view, you can offer a bit of moral and, if you've been passing the bucket round at work maybe financial, support; and it reminds you that whatever the BBC says is largely false - particularly this stitch-up job right here. Instead of all that, go here, or here, or here (and particularly this). Or just talk to your postie. As one guy said to us on Friday, the bosses think the customers are the corporate clients, but for posties it's all about the average person in their houses and flats. So why not pass the time of day with them when you see 'em?

The only upside is that it turns out Amazon haven't permanently cancelled their RM contract, so one day we may be able to speak again. In the words of an animated moose in an altogether different context, "now our consciences are clear and the healing can begin." Except for the conscience bit of course.

Then there was some personal stuff, which need not delay us here, and a bloody awful cold to round it off nicely.

In the meantime, we've had a Nazi on telly, which at least thoroughly vindicated the case for no platform.*

We've had the frankly bizarre idea that a war criminal would be a good symbol of the EU. Not that member nations don't have their fair share of guilt in that regard of course, it's just unusual to use barbarity as your actual mascot. It's all a bit, you know, urgh. Thank the lords that's all over.

We've had the Tories unveil stupid and vicious policies clearly aimed at launching a major assault on the concept of public service itself. Nothing new there of course, but the scale of some plans is quite breathtaking. And they're going to be in power next year apparently.

Then the Mail had it's own Sachsgate, where widespread public outrage caused heads to roll at the highest level, sorry, I mean, the chair of the PCC's ethics committee, Paul Dacre, must have had to make some tough decisions over what action to take in the face of an unprecedented 25,000 complaints. Inaction was almost certainly the right ethical choice to make.

On the upside, there's been some good films out recently, I've got a talk coming up on Marx and Darwin that I hope should be reasonably interesting to anyone somewhat interested, and however debased and ridiculous our political discourse gets** at least there's always Americans.

Now I'm off to watch Generation Kill and listen to the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy.

What?

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*My favourite piece of shameless dishonesty by the way was 'I have not got a conviction for holocaust denial.' Quite right Nick, your conviction is for incitement to racial hatred, which shows you in a much better light.

**I'm thinking particularly of the now legendary HYSer who apparently unironically compared Nick Griffin to Atticus Finch. If there is such a thing as anti-genius, this is surely it.

Will This Dread Egalitarianism Never Cease?

... was my response when I learnt that JockBottlerMcBroon was pursuing yet another madcap socialist scheme to make us all the same, like robots and stuff.

Now even our beloved Royals are being brought under his relentless jockboot/iron sporran.

Don't these ZaNuLiaBore nazis understand that the !1 thing we poor downtrodden brits have left is the specialness of our Royal Family? Personally there's not a day that goes by without me looking at Princes Charles or Edward without me thinking 'Ah, they're special.'

If we allow Papist scum to marry into this family, this sacred bastion of Protestantism, it's just one more Socialist (or as I call it, Socia-LIES-t) measure to make us all into their clockwork robot people. The message is, basically, ANYONE can become a royal, if they work hard at deb balls and public school.

I only hope that the GRATE BRITISH PUBLIC see through this transparent nonsense.