P&J Column 8.12.14
Osborne aims for public spending at the level of the 1930s. Those halcyon days of the Great Depression, Fascism and World War II.
Cosmo Ludovik Fawkes Hunt, 13th Earl of Kinmuck
I’ve decided to go back to the Tories. I had been thinking of throwing my lot in with that UKIP chappie, Farage. He shows the occasional flash of good sense, but he has seriously gone down in my estimation this week, with this business about not letting women breast-feed in public. What an appalling message that sends. Opportunities to surreptitiously sneak a peep at an unclothed bosom come seldom enough in modern life. We should give our unabashed backing to the infant’s right to slurp. We are so badly let down by the political classes these days. So when the Chancellor mentioned “cuts” this week, my ears pricked up in much the same manner as do those of my Bull Mastiffs, Adolf and Hermann, when they hear me shout “trespassers”.
The Chancellor plans to turn public spending back to the level of the 1930s! Ah, the Thirties! A golden time for we Fawkes-Huntes, when grandpapa, the 11th Earl, made a stinking pile of money from steel manufacturing fuelled by coal hewn from our lesser estate down in Fife. The steel was needed for munitions, you see, as the country girded its loins for war. Happy days, and as one looks at events in the Ukraine and the East one is not wholly without hope that we may see them again. In the meantime, though, we must tolerate a great deal of tommyrot. There are even some shrill voices in the lower orders opposed to the Chancellor’s proposals. They talk of the death of any pretence at caring capitalism, the evisceration of the welfare state and the deliberate creation of a new underclass.
Well, really. This is the sort of unalloyed tripe that has passed for political debate in this country since we introduced universal suffrage. And it leads to dangerous nonsense, like the conception that all are equal in the eyes of the law. Take the other day, when Andrew Mitchell MP lost the “plebgate” libel case. Now of course Mitchell is not out of the absolute top drawer. As a banker, his money is newer than one would wish. His commission was in the Royal Tanks, not the Household Cavalry; father only held a knighthood and he went to Rugby School, which, as we old Etonians know, is pretty much a local comprehensive. But still, he is man of some standing. So how could a right thinking member of the judiciary choose to believe the word of a policeman over Mitchell? “Credibility and reliability of evidence?” When he was the Sheriff-Substitute of Banff and Boyndie my great-grandfather, the 10th Earl, didn’t monkey about with that. He asked ’em what they did for a living and settled it on the basis of that. Landed gentry trumped professional, professional trumped trade, and trade trumped servant. Disputes between people within the same bracket were resolved by means of checking the turnover of their audited accounts or, if necessary, by seeing which one of them could run further before being bitten on the backside by Bertie, his Doberman Pinscher. The world was simpler then. People didn’t get ideas above their station. They knew where they stood then. And they certainly had to stand if they couldn’t outrun Bertie.
Cava Kenny Cordiner, the football pundit who saw more reds than Senator Joe McCarthy.
As I sit at my laptop to type my weekly amusings, I am sure that a lot of you will agree with me that footballers should not never be aloud near a computer! I’m talking about “Super” Mario Ballytelly after his latest giraffe on social medium.
For at least 30 years, football has always been about characters. Players like George Best (Besty), Jimmy Johnstone (Jinky) Paul Gascoigne (Gazza) and Diego Maradona (Maradona) have all been described as a “torchered Guinesses”. Super Mario is following suite and he’s just as likely to feature on the front pages as the back pages with some of his shenannygoats. The thing is, these modren footballers can put their foots in it at the touch of a button. I’m glad we never had that Facebook or Twister or when I was playing or I’d have sometimes always been in water what’s hotter than hot water. And believe me you, with all the early baths I had I was no stranger to it! Back in my day, if you had something to get off your vest, you had to wait til one of the local journos asked to do an interview for the Green Final. And that only come along once every four years. What’s got Mario into bother this time is he’s posted a image of a famous video game star what contained loads of racial stereotypes. He says it was just a joke but racism is not a joking matter. Especially in football, Where everyone knows that the powers that be don’t have no sense of humour. Just like the Germans.