Andrew Neil's introduction on last night's This Week has, rightly, been widely praised. As some of the transcriptions of it have been less than wholly accurate, here it is in full:
Welcome to This Week...
The week in which a bunch of loser jihadists slaughtered 132 innocents in Paris to 'prove' the future belongs to them rather than a civilisation like France.
Well I can't say I fancy their chances.
France, the country of Descartes, Boulez, Monet, Sartre, Rousseau, Camus, Renoir, Berlioz, Cézanne, Gauguin, Hugo, Voltaire, Matisse, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Satie, Pasteur, Molière, Franck, Zola, Balzac, Poulenc, cutting-edge science, world class medicine, fearsome security forces, nuclear power, Coco Chanel, Chateau Lafite, coq au vin, Daft Punk, Zizou Zidane, Juliette Binoche, liberté, égalité, fraternité and crème brûlée.
Versus what? Beheadings, crucifixions, amputations, slavery, mass murder, medieval squalor - a death cult barbarity that would shame the Middle Ages.
Well IS or Daesh or ISIS or ISIL or whatever name you're going by - I'm sticking with IS, as in Islamist scumbags - I think the outcome is pretty clear to everybody but you:
Whatever atrocities you're currently capable of committing, you will lose.
In a thousand years time Paris, the glorious city of lights, will still be shining bright as will every other city like it, while you will be as dust, along with the ragbag of Fascists, Nazis and Stalinists who have previously dared to challenge democracy and failed.Well, let's hope so.
