Right Wing Idiot Fails To See Irony In Own Rant

I love right wing commenters on newspaper sites. They never seem to fail to amuse me with their eye-swivelling, raging invective against anybody they see as being 'not right'. This time, however, it's the entire country that is the target for their impotent rage. In a comment following on from this piece in the Telegraph came this rant about Labour's Britain:

"A mental picture of Labour’s achievements since 1997

* UK bound illegal immigrants massing in Sangatte

* Fat, career benefit claimants sat in front of the TV

* Drunken girls fighting outside a pub at 1:30 am

* Reams of costly regulations sitting on my desk

* The sun reflecting off of a speed camera on the A3

* The sneaky paedophiles hiding around every corner

* The big yellow signs that say…. £1.16 per litre

* The tax bill I paid this morning

* Dole scrounging aliens calling UK soldiers murderers

* A shop full to the brim with Chinese imports

* The empty space where once stood a beat policeman

* The car tax disc costing more than some cars

* Very young girls pushing prams

* 3rd world countries humiliating UK armed forces

* Britain as the world’s laughing stock

* Brown & Blair stepping off their chartered BA 777

* Pay nothing for 1st year, then 5 years interest free

* Hayes – Middlesex, or Karachi?

* The end of saved-for luxury items – a ‘must have’?

* A knife glistening as it catches the sun’s light

* India’s space missions – Britain’s baby bonds

* Fat people waddling down the road like pregnant ducks

* Can’t read, can’t talk, can’t write – ready for work

* The have-a-go hero sentenced to 5 years in prison

* The teenage girl ignoring me as I hold the door open

* CCTV & bolted gates on schools & nurseries

* Talent: – Elton, Bowie, Floyd? – No, Leona & Cheryl

* All foreign English football clubs – Uhh?

* The death of Great Britain"


Anton Vowl was right on his blog to call this a mental picture indeed. Trouble is, it's so easy to co-opt any or all of those statements into a blast against the state of Britain after years of successive Tory governments. Here's my attempt:

• UK bound foreign finance organisations coming to pick the bones off our declining industrial base
• Fat, career benefits claimants sitting in front of a TV - unemployment reached a record high of over 3 million in the mid-eighties that has never been beaten - though the Tories came close again in the early 1990's.
  
• Drunken men fighting outside pubs at 1:30am
• Lack of important regulations protecting workers from overwork, low pay, poor conditions, workplace bullying, and poor safety standards resulting in our workforce being one of the lowest paid and overworked in Europe
• The sun reflecting off the sinking hull of the General Belgrano after being sunk on Thatcher's orders despite it being outside the exclusion zone and heading away from the exclusion zone
• The sneaky paedophiles lurking around every corner - we just hear about them more now since the media decided that paedophilia was an epidemic
• The big signs across the gates of mines, docks and steelworks saying 'CLOSED'
• The council tax bills we all have to pay every month
• Soldiers being sent to die and kill to essentially keep a Prime Minister in power
• Shops full to the brim with imports from Taiwan and China
• The empty space where once stood a beat policeman before the Tories decided to pull police off the streets and make them fill out forms instead
• Car tax has always cost more than some cars
• Very young girls pushing prams - Britain had the fourth highest teenage pregnancy rate in the Western world in 1996. Under a Tory government.
• 3rd world countries humiliating British armed forces - we didn't actually win the Falklands, Argentina still lays claim to them to this day...
• Britain as the world's laughing stock - how those Europeans laughed at our low wages, dying industry, culture of overwork, and lack of protection for the most vulnerable in our society
• Thatcher stepping out of her private RAF helicopter
• The start of the culture of irresponsible lending to try and escape the black hole of the recession that, ultimately, led to another recession.
• Canary Wharf - London or New York?
• The end for saved-up-for luxury items thanks to record unemployment and a massive recession
• A knife glistening as it catches the sunlight - knife crime is not a new thing. Ask Peter Sutcliffe.
• Europe's space missions - Britain taking children's school milk off them to reduce education spending
• Fat bankers waddling into chauffeur driven Daimlers
• Record levels of illiteracy due to slashing on education spending that resulted in fewer teachers, larger class sizes and employing cheaper non-qualified non-teaching assistants to help instead of qualified teachers
• Have a go heroes have always ended up coming off worse if they happen to survive - it's the British law (that the Tories didn't try to get changed either when they had the chance) that lands such people in prison.
• Teenage girls ignoring people when you hold the door open for them. Because they're fucking teenagers.
• Lack of adequate security in schools and a consistent refusal to acknowledge the potential dangers of not spending money to help schools increase their security by successive Tory governments that eventually let a man walk into a primary school in Dunblane and shoot a classroom full of five year olds.
• Talent - Elton? Bowie? Floyd? No. Bros and Wham!
• All foreign-owned British industry - huh?
• The death of Great Britain, and its replacement with Thatcher's hateful, rich-coddling, poor-denigrating abysmal shithole of a country, obssessed with wealth but denying it to millions 

It's so easy to just reel off a list of things that are bad about the state of a nation - but in my case I also made at least a vague attempt to tie in why these things were bad as a result of Tory policies down the years, whereas Mr Dimwit commentator seems to think that somehow Labour should be going round schools talent scouting future David Bowies or Elton Johns, whilst simultaneously he also ignores all of the excellent musical talent this country has produced in the last thirteen years (I also did this in my list simply to show how stupid a statement it is - the eighties - like the last thirteen years - produced some excellent music). What always galls me about such frothing right wing attacks is the lack of thought and research that goes into their emotive rants. When I get cross about something, I rant about it, but I also check my facts to make sure that, whilst ranting, I don't end up looking like a total tit. It makes sense. Most conservatives don't seem to understand the simple idea of checking your facts - this goes all the way up to their biggest newspapers, too, sadly, where fact takes second place to making things up or misrepresenting the truth in order to push a right wing agenda (or, in the case of certain popular newspapers, a right-wing, racist and homophobic agenda).

I can't help but wonder if conservatives fall into two categories; the very, very stupid and easily led, who agree with what they are told as long as it makes them good and angry (immigrants stealing our jobs and shouting abuse at our troops? THE BASTARDS! String 'em up!) and don't really think about checking the facts of what they're told; they are gullible, overly trusting of 'official sources' and not given to critical thinking. The other type are very, very clever and know  perfectly well that they are peddling bullshit to the other type, and they manipulate them cynically in order to sell newspapers or gain political power. No wonder the Tories are attacking 'soft subjects' at colleges and schools, and specifically mention Media Studies - a subject that often contains modules encouraging students to view what the news and newspapers tell us in a far more cynical and critical light. If everybody gradually learned that the newspapers are full of PR, manipulation and lies, conservative politics would be buggered.