A Post in Five Rants

Famously, we don't do rants here at 'Is', but...

Rant the First

The past few weeks have been quite something, politically-speaking. 

As many of you will have noticed, there's been an all-out assault on UKIP from the media and the political class. 

I've never seen anything quite like it before. 

That the Tories seem to have been in cahoots with the Guardian says it all.

Some of you will blame the BBC, but the assault has come from all angles and the likes of the Daily Telegraph, the Times, the Spectator, the Daily Mail, Sky News and LBC have at least as bad as the BBC and the Guardian, if not worse. 

The Daily Telegraph has particularly shocked me. 

I don't mind if Dan Hodges writes ten attempted hatchet jobs a week on UKIP because he's just giving his opinion, but I do mind if the paper's political correspondents (people who claim to be more detached) suddenly start publishing blatant smears about the party. 

One such piece really made the scales fall from my eyes as someone (below the line) linked to what the UKIP member had actually written, and comparing that with what the Telegraph reporter said he'd written proved beyond doubt that the Telegraph reporter was deliberately casting the UKIP member's views in the worst possible light - i.e. smearing him, blatantly and unequivocally smearing him.

I will never trust that reporter again. 

Rant the Second

Tonight's PM had more Nigel Farage-bashing, courtesy of Nick Robinson, and then banged on about the Premier League boss Peter Scudamore and his evil sexist private emails to a friend on a works email system. 

Some of the same pack who are going after UKIP are now going after Mr Scudamore (including David Cameron and the BBC) and they won't be satisfied until they've got him sacked. 

If I could vote for Peter Scudamore this Thursday I would, just to spite them all. They deserve nothing less. 

Rant the Third

This kind of thing sometimes works in reverse. The Daily Mail has been smearing a BBC reporter today, namely Chris Rogers.

Chris Rogers and Panorama may have genuine questions to answer about this particular episode on racism and football in Poland and Ukraine, but Chris Rogers' goofing around with his BBC pals and doing a Basil Fawlty impersonation (goose-stepping with a finger under his nose) isn't a big deal. It may have been frivolous but it was a private joke mocking Nazis (and neo-Nazis) - a joke originally made on a classic BBC programme.

If you want to see a smear in action, just look at the Mail's opening paragraph: 

A BBC journalist was filmed giving a Nazi salute and goose stepping while filming a documentary about anti-Semitic football fans in Poland and Ukraine.

'Nuff said (as they say).

The most jaw-dropping thing here though is the po-faced, The Sun Has Got His Hat On-style panic that seemed to have engulfed the BBC when the 'gaffe' became known. 

Chris Rogers was made to confess to his crime and publicly apologise. He was "strongly reprimanded" by the BBC. There was an internal probe into his behaviour and he was dropped from Panorama. 

Utter madness!

As for me, well, I'll have two egg mayonnaise, a prawn Goebbels, a Hermann Goering, and four Colditz salads...

Rant the Fourth

Two-minutes hates. There's something Orwellian about them.

They hate Clarkson, that UKIP councillor who said something or other, Peter Scudamore, Nigel Farage, etc, and we hate James O'Brien, that UKIP-bashing audience member on Question Time, Heather Rabbatts, Chris Rogers, etc.

I hate two-minutes hates.

Rant the Fifth

I hate ranting. Grrrrrrrrr!!!