‘Just fack off, you dirty people, roo-nin’ our ’oliday’

From Paul Adams to Paul Wood...

The BBC's Paul Wood has a piece on the Mediterranean immigrant crisis in The Spectator.  His language tells us a fair amount about where he's coming from. 

It begins:

A young woman in a headscarf stumbled over some rocks and onto the beach. She stood there, rigid, stunned, then burst into tears. A grandmotherly German tourist hugged her. ‘It’s over now, you’re safe,’ she said. ‘You’re in Europe.’

I don't think, however, that we're meant to approve of the lady with the Essex accent though, given the way Paul Wood mocks her way of speaking (and her hair):

On Lesbos, the boats’ arrival is a tourist attraction, people gathering on the road above the beach to watch. ‘Just fack off, you dirty people, roo-nin’ our ’oliday,’ shouted a peroxide blonde woman with an Essex accent as a group of migrants struggled over the lip of the hill onto the road. 

This is reporting that appears to adhere to Lyse Doucet's view of BBC reporting:

I do believe absolutely that we have to show compassion. Otherwise we would...I mean you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by what is happening in the wars of our time. 

There was certainly plenty of compassion...and anger in Paul Wood's Spectator piece.