Does anyone else worry about the way people like Laura Kuenssberg or Norman Smith are called in on every occasion to interpret all political news? It’s as though they hold themselves superior to the lot of us, (the ignoramuses) speculating on the motives of the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, Boris Johnson or whoever. Do they know what’s inside the head of IDS? Does IDS even know?
As soon as something happens, along comes Laura to tell us what we should think, and it’s getting ridiculous. Analysis is one thing, but imperious interpretation is superfluous to requirements. It's overpowering, really.
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I watched Simon Heffer’s speech to a packed Bexit crowd. (H/T comments @ B-BBC)
Very nice, but what with Iain Duncan Smith, the BBC and arguably George Osborne and David Cameron helping to undermine their own government, if we vote ‘out’ because we want to regain sovereignty and we want to decide our own future, well, the thing that worries me most is - who will the ‘we’ actually be? The Conservative party’s loss might be the Labour party’s gain, and given the current leadership that bothers me greatly.
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My agenda was that I wanted to like Stewart Lee and dislike Jo Brand. It didn’t work out.
I watched Stewart Lee’s tedious shaggy cat story about Jeremy Corbyn, the cat.
As soon as he started saying that his diarrhea-afflicted cat was called Jeremy Corbyn, dread descended and hung there like a blanket. A gross ending was imminent. I didn’t even foresee a protracted, interminable raspberry, which the Grimsby Telegraph seemed to find amusing, but the punchline involving the England flag, some shit, the national anthem and someone confusing the cat called Jeremy Corbyn for the ordinary Jeremy Corbyn, couldn’t come soon enough.
How did this script come about? He must have thought: edgy + Jeremy Corbyn + crap -- patriotism--> laborious monologue. He allowed the tail to wag the cat, so to speak; pity you can’t unhear things.
Was that Chris Morris dishing out advice? He should have advised against.
On the other hand Jo Brand’s walk thing was alright. I don’t dislike Jo Brand at all. Despite her political views, she can be funny, but that sitcom about the geriatric ward - Getting On, in which she played Nurse Kim Wilde with Vicky Pepperdine as Dr Pippa Moore - was fine.
Even though he had a small role in Blackadder I could never be persuaded to like Jeremy Harding, if you get my drift, but I think Jo Brand is ok.
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Did you read this? As soon as I saw Rod Liddle’s article on the Spectator I realised I’d already heard this Taiwanese author on Start The Week with Andrew Marr. I thought she sounded odd then, but now I’ve connected her with a video, captured clandestinely on his mobile phone by ‘Tommy Robinson’ I know she’s not only odd, but dim.
She has written this dire book about what she sees as 'the far right', and what baffles me is that such an ill-conceived project ever got published, let alone plugged (yes it was) on the BBC.
Just as Hsiao-Hung Pai hasn’t read the Koran, I haven’t read "Angry White People", so at the risk of being berated for my own ignorance, I wonder why anyone would publish such sensationalised drivel in the first place? Judging from the attitude of the author, the answer’s in the question. It’s sensationalist and shallow. Perhaps it ticks the boxes of a publisher that also lists Ilan Pappé and Richard Falk amongst its authors.
