Ragged Right 2

RAGGED Right is a look at some of the gems the nation’s columnists shower upon us with dizzying frequency because they have a financial requirement to write something new at least once a week. Actually, many of them don’t write something new – they bang the same drum over and over again which, in a way, is entertaining in itself. 

 

 

Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, November 6, 2010:

Why was it even necessary to tell us about a bomb in a freight plane that didn’t go off?

Er, because if we hadn’t been told and the information had been leaked at a later time, dull-witted people writing in weekend newspapers would have asked: “Why wasn’t it necessary to tell us about a bomb in a freight plane that didn’t go off?”

 

Stephen Glover on why David Cameron does not need a personal photographer, in the Daily Mail, November 5, 2010:

Here’s a radical idea. Let Mr Cameron be his attractive self.

And the Big Brown Nose Award 2010 goes to . . .

 

Richard Littlejohn praises the Tea Party, in the Daily Mail, November 5, 2010:

Of course, all manner of nutters attach themselves to any cause. We’ve got more than our own fair share of bigots and zealots.

Do I need to add anything to this?

 

Leo McKinstry, in feather-spitting push-me-pull-you mode, makes two interesting statements in the Daily Express, November 4, 2010:

Only last week it was revealed that, incredibly, 90 per cent of all jobs created under Labour went to foreigners. 

And contrary to Left­wing propaganda, immigrants are far more likely to be unem­ployed and on welfare than Britons.

Get your heads round that one.

 

Julie Burchill slags off Islamists and gives us a history lesson, in the Independent, November 3, 2010:

. . . My eyes were very much opened by a Radio 4 documentary a while back called Hitler’s Muslim Legions, about the tens of thousands of Islamic volunteers for the fascist cause. And Israel – the usual excuse for Islamist evil – didn’t even exist then! With Remembrance Day approaching, I for one – totally fed up with being branded a racist/fascist/imperialist just because I don’t believe girls should have their noses cut off for cheeking their husbands – am certainly going to remember this piece of military history. Islamo-fascism– literally! Get out of THAT one, all you icky Western apologists for Islamism’s worst excesses!

And that fat bloke what started fascism, Mussolini, he must have been one too. And that little chap with the moustache. And all those Germans and Italians and Spaniards. And that bloomin’ Pope what backed them. Cor.

 

Melanie Phillips on the police and other emergency services having to fill in forms before they attend incidents, in the Daily Mail, November 1, 2010:

Health ’n’ safety? It’ll kill you. Or so runs the long-standing joke.

Oh, how we laughed. But isn’t it only a joke among the weak-wristed, flabby-buttocked, do-nothing-but-speak-your-lazy-mind classes whose most dangerous activity is using a tin-opener?

 

Leo McKinstry on the plan to cap housing benefit, in the Daily Express, November 1, 2010:

Labour wails that, when the cap is imposed, some claimants will be forced to move. There is a simple answer to that: so what? Almost everyone in work has to match their accommodation to their budget. Where I live near Margate in Kent, many of my neighbours spend over three hours commuting to London every day because they can’t afford to live in the capital.

There is an obvious solution to this. According to Wikipedia, Margate’s population is 97.1 per cent white, but only 11 per cent possess a higher or professional qualification – while the national average is 20 per cent. So if the poor people who are forced out of London go to Margate, they’ll enrich the gene pool and raise educational standards. Sorted.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer on David Cameron’s plan to cap housing benefit, in the Sunday Express, October 31, 2010:

Bizarrely, the Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, even declared that the cap would lead to “Kosovo-style social cleansing” by forcing poor people to move out of central London. This isn’t the case, since people in council housing will remain where they are. But even if it was true, would it really be so unfair?

Gosh, no. And when they came back in to work or to beg they could all wear yellow badges sewn on their jackets to make them easily identifiable. It’s worked before.

 

Max Hastings trots out what is the universally accepted portrayal of people who abuse the housing benefit system, in the Daily Mail, October 30, 2010:

If you have four, five or six children, you will be allocated more generous accommodation or larger private rental subsidy than if you have only one or two. This may be humane, but removes the smallest incentive towards responsible family planning.  In every supermarket we see teenage mothers — many of them single women — with pushchairs, for whose lifestyle choice we pay the bills.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Lady Oriol Bowdon, the wealthy widow of a baronet, is jailed for 12 weeks for a £90,000 housing benefit scam with her live-in lover, Graham Young. Curiously, m’ lady’s case does not feature in a panel titled The Families Milking The System (two Muslim families, two Somalis, an Afghan and a family of travellers) at the foot of the Hastings column.

 

Frederick Forsyth argues that frontline workers will be axed in town hall cutbacks but the “pen-pushers” will retain their jobs, in the Daily Express, October 30, 2010:

Sharon and her lesbian outreach co-ordinators will stay, along with Deidre and her ethnic dance facilitators. Diversity management will stay along with the Winterval (Christmas replacement) Team. Elth and Safety will be sacrosanct in case anyone tries to enjoy themselves.

Daily Express pen-pusher nominates himself for the axe by illustrating he has neither the skill nor the inclination to raise his sights above hackneyed stereotypes and come up with something fresh and imaginative.

 

Leo “Two Jobs” McKinstry sounds his siren as the firefighters prepare to strike over new contracts being imposed on them, in the Daily Mail, October 27, 2010:

Firefighters have to work only 142 shifts a year, made up of 71 night shifts and 71 day shifts, allowing them plenty of time to hold down second jobs.

The observant might note that as well as writing two columns a week for the Express, Leo has time for a second job at the Mail. He probably has more, but the truth is I just can’t be arsed to look into it.

 

Simon Heffer has an Orwellian moment while criticising the Tube and Firefighter strikes, and predicting a winter of discontent, in the Daily Telegraph, October 27, 2010:

When the cuts become tangible instead of metaphysical, how will NHS staff, or members of the teaching unions, or local government workers regard the question of defending their jobs? I think we should imagine that they will defend them, and in the traditional fashion: which will mean that a country struggling to recover from the self-inflicted wound of Labour’s economic mismanagement will be further retarded in doing so.

Meanwhile, in the meagre kitchens and living-rooms of the land, in the quiet places away from the probing closed-circuit TV cameras, people still whisper to their trusted friends: “But wasn’t it the bankers who caused the problem?”

 

Peter McKay ignores the fact that Tory spending cuts have deprived aircraft carriers of aircraft and in an amazing twist of logic says Gordon Brown should foot the bill because of the misdemeanours of Dame Shirley Porter, in the Daily Mail, October 26, 2010:

Why not make Brown personally compensate us for this appalling waste of money? He and his ilk forced Dame Shirley Porter — a Tory and Tesco heiress — to pay £12 million back to Westminster Council out of her own fortune after it was decided that she’d played a key role in selling off council homes to Tory voters, an act of ‘wilful misconduct’.

Dame Shirley Porter was determined to have acted illegally by the District Auditor, not Gordon Brown “and his ilk”. This judgement was upheld in the High Court, overturned by the Court of Appeal, then reinstated by the House of Lords.

 

Boris Johnson on the prospect of Commander Andy Coles – whose new submarine ran aground off the Isle of Skye last week – facing a court martial, in the Daily Telegraph, October 25, 2010:

If I were advising Cdr Coles, the key point I would urge him to get across is that steering these colossal bits of Britain’s nuclear defence can be trickier than you think.

I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.

 

Andrew Pierce on former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in the Daily Mail, October 25, 2010:

Brown has not spoken, or tabled one single question in Parliament, since he resigned as PM in May. Yet it was his profligate spending that created the need for the spending cuts in the first place. 

Thanks for setting the record straight. There was me and the rest of the world thinking it was the greedy, private sector bankers who started the crisis.

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, October 25, 2010:

There is nothing remotely fair about our current welfare system that punishes job-holders but lavishes taxpayers’ money on feckless single mothers or queue-jumping travellers or bogus asylum seekers. Why should a taxpaying commuter who cannot afford to live in central London have to fork out for a sponger who feels entitled to a residence in Chelsea?

Monday, 3am: Leo wakes, takes medication for ulcer. Monday, 3.15am: Leo writes column based on dream of muddled, distorted world. Monday, 3.45am: Leo files column to newspaper that prints stories of muddled, distorted world. Monday, 4am: Leo takes more medication for ulcer, blows out candle and returns to muddled, distorted world.

 

Peter Hitchens stews in his bunker, in the Mail on Sunday, October 24, 2010:

Comprehensive education is designed to be inferior to selective schooling, but is supposed to make us more equal, the fundamental purpose of our more-or-less communist state machine.

And now we’ll close the metal door quietly and tiptoe away.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer on George Osborne’s cuts, in the Sunday Express, October 24, 2010:

It might sound like a bitter pill to swallow but a return to living in the real world may turn out to be just what the doctor ordered.

Gosh. When you put it like that, Julia, I can see the sense behind making 490,000 people redundant, throwing hard-working families out of their council homes, scrapping public services and building aircraft carriers that don’t have aircraft. Sign me up.

 

Amanda Platell on Wayne Rooney, in the Daily Mail, October 23, 2010:

Swaggering down the road, grinning like the idiot he is, Wayne Rooney made for a ­repulsive sight this week as he held Manchester United to ransom over his bloated pay demands. 

Talented individual embraces pillars of the capitalist system, demonstrates the principles of supply and demand in a free market economy, negotiates contract with private sector organisation – and gets slagged off in the Daily Mail. You just can’t win.

 

Patrick O’Flynn on the demise of the European Union, in the Daily Express, October 23, 2010:

IN BRITAIN we have become just another part of the European failure story. This week we had the humiliation of defence cuts that left us with an aircraft carrier bereft of aircraft and wider spending reductions designed to cure us of a decadent habit of borrowing from countries with fiercer work ethics to subsidise an unsustainable public realm.

If Paddy’s work ethic wasn’t so fierce, he’d have had time to notice it was the Tories who – quite wilfully – left us with an aircraft carrier bereft of aircraft, not a gang of foreign Johnnies. Keep up, boy.

 

Richard Littlejohn on the relationship between David Cameron and Nick Clegg, in the Daily Mail, October 22, 2010:

When the Supreme Court approved ­prenuptial contracts this week, it must have had the Coalition Agreement in mind. After all, if pre-nups can apply to marriage, why not civil partnerships, too?

Dickie. No. Please. Not the same old and tired formula. You’re not going to do a lukewarm parody of divorce proceedings, are you? Oh . . . You are . . .

 

Kevin Maguire on the Osborne cuts, in the Daily Mirror, October 21, 2010:

Butcher George Osborne’s brutal £81billion attack is unfair and avoidable. Yet Conservative MPs celebrated the job losses, cheered the austerity. This is, as Labour’s Alan Johnson neatly put it, an ideological moment. David Cameron’s deficit deceivers are using debt as cover to slash and burn their way across Britain.

Hey. You’re on the wrong website, pal. Only raving red-necks, the politically unhinged, the educationally challenged, simpering sycophants, closet fascists, rude old men, the sexually inept and Richard Littlejohn allowed on here. Sling yer hook.

 

Guess who Leo McKinstry is slagging off in the Daily Express, October 21, 2010:

###### has been exposed as a dishonourable, cash-fixated slimeball.

A) Tony Blair, B) his fellow Express columnist and former Tory MP Neil Hamilton, C) Wayne Rooney, D) Anybody he happens to mention in any of his columns. That’s right, it’s D.

 

Benedict Brogan on the Comprehensive Spending Review, in the Daily Telegraph, October 21, 2010:

If anything, Conservatives should rejoice that they have a Chancellor who delights in the fray. Labour may be rudderless, but it will still need to be defeated. Which is why politics still matters, and why it was necessary to nail the Opposition yesterday. Repairing the finances may be in the national interest, but if you are George Osborne, so is making sure Labour doesn’t get another chance. Politics with a purpose, you might say.

Columnist demonstrates extremely ably that in certain circles politics is not about running the country, it’s about controlling the country.

 

Max Hastings, after telling us he has specialist knowledge in the defence field, criticises this week’s spending cuts and the retention of two expensive aircraft carriers, in the Daily Mail, October 21, 2010:

Some of us always predicted that the Royal Navy was digging its own grave by insisting on these behemoths, and so it now looks.

Do they dig graves in the Navy? Bit of forethought, please. That’s what you’re paid for. Supposedly.

 

 Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, October 21, 2010:

The House was so full that Mr Osborne had encountered trouble finding a seat. He practically sat on William Hague’s lap. Careful lad!

Man with something to say doesn’t quite have the nerve to say it.

  

Vanessa Feltz clicks her tongue over a scheme to get nine million computer illiterate Britons familiar with the internet, in the Daily Express, October 19, 2010:

So focused are they on dragging us away from our solitary musings, country walks, painting, embroidery, calligraphy, prize marrows, long-distance running and – dare I say the word – books and plonking us in front of horrible little winking, blinking, beeping screens, they are chucking bucket loads of money at luring us into their woeful worldwide web.

Comfortably-off columnist with opportunity to do all these things and time and means to do them misses point entirely.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, October 19, 2010:

A shortage of toilets could lead to the cancellation of the 2012 Glastonbury Festival. All the Portaloos in the country have been pre-booked by the organisers of the London Olympics.

Man who spends too much time in the toilets. The Guardian reported two days ago that Glastonbury had been cancelled. And what does “pre-booked” mean?

 

Quentin Letts on yesterday in Parliament, in the Daily Mail, October 19, 2010:

One of the Tory ministers is Maria Miller. In Opposition, Welsh-reared Mrs Miller was impeccably south English county – her seat is Basingstoke – and her speaking voice would not have disgraced a Hampshire tennis club. You know the sort: outer courts, ladies’ ladder matches, talk of their children at prep school and then a pert shower before zooming away in the Range Rover.

I’m at a disadvantage here because, actually, I don’t know the sort.

 

Leo McKinstry on immigration, in the Daily Express, October 18, 2010:

The strain of mass immigration on social security, the NHS, education and policing is already out of control. According to the office of national statistics we spend £12 million a day on schooling for migrant children. This is not only financial madness but also a gross injustice as newly arrived migrants have made no contribution through taxation towards services or benefits.

Spot the “gross injustice”: A) We spend £12m a day on schooling migrant children; B) We condemn those innocent children to a life of ignorance so they have little hope of ever contributing. Oaf.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer on student loans and university fees, in the Sunday Express, October 17, 2010:

But why do we want so many youngsters to go to university anyway? Who came up with the daft idea that half of all young people should spend three years studying for a degree? And exactly how drunk were they at the time? After all, if half of the population is capable of getting a degree, is that really a qualification worth having?

You’re right, Julia. We need a large reservoir of ill-educated thickos otherwise the Express will run out of benefit cheat, selfish breeder, Shameless society, parasitic scrounger stories.

 

Janet Daley, one of a seemingly endless stream of columnists still carping on about rich people losing benefits, in the Daily Telegraph, October 16, 2010:

Well, the Conservatives say, in an ideal world (a favourite phrase of the moment) we would be making life easier for the “squeezed middle” – alas, the state of the economy does not permit. But how good for the economic future is moral despair and the alienation of hard-working, conscientious people?

Help is at hand. I’ve just heard that financial aid is flooding in from the Chilean miners, French unions and Hugo Chavez. Solidarity. We’re all in this together.

 

Dominic Sandbrook on former prime minister Tony Blair, in the Daily Mail, October 16, 2010:

And while Mr Blair was right to pursue the peace process in Northern Ireland and to devolve power to the Scottish and Welsh assemblies, he frittered his resources away on expensive gimmicks like the Millennium Dome, preferring short-term popularity to the long-term interests of the British people.

And here’s me thinking all these years that the Millennium Dome was commissioned by John Major and pursued with enthusiasm by his deputy, Michael Heseltine, three years before Blair came to power. Well I’ll go t’t foot of our stairs.

 

Frederick Forsyth supports Nigel Farage’s bid for the leadership of Ukip, in the Daily Express, October 16, 2010:

Any of the rival contenders – some of whom are not even household names in their own households – could hope to hold the high moral ground on Europe.

Anti-EU columnist makes clear his choice for Ukip leader while inadvertently revealing party is a bunch on nonentities.

 

Peter Oborne, still furious about the Tory attacks on middle-class benefits, in the Daily Telegraph, October 15, 2010:

October has been an utterly devastating month for Britain’s hard-working middle classes.

Work a bit harder, pal, and come up with some new subject material, for heaven’s sake.

 

Jan Moir constructs a column of 830 words on a row Nigella Lawson and husband Charles Saatchi have been having with their neighbours concerning scaffolding, in the Daily Mail, October 15, 2010:

It used to be that scaffolding in the street was a sure sign that the neighbourhood was on the up and up. Now, selfish neighbours have meant that the approach of the scaffold lorry is met with utter dread.

Utter dread. Scaffold lorry. Jesus H Christ.

 

Leo McKinstry, while fuming over the ineptitude (one of his favourite words) of quangos, ineptly muddles his metaphors as he blunders into the abolition of the UK Film Council, in the Daily Express, October 15, 2010 (all typos included):

But this balloon of hysterical condem­ nation was punctured by the acid wit of oscar­ winning actor and screenwriter Julian Fellowes, the creator of tV series Downton Abbey.

When I look back at all those times we used to puncture balloons with acid, I think to myself: wouldn’t it have been so much easier with a pin?

 

Richard Littlejohn criticises the press and TV coverage of the dramatic rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners, in the Daily Mail, October 15, 2010:

I don’t know any of these people. Nor does anyone else in Britain. So why invest so much time and emotional energy in the fate of total strangers?

Sad man trapped in his own little cave is bewildered by worldwide outpouring of joy and compassion. Apparently, rescuers gave up drilling through to Littlejohn many years ago.

 

Patrick O’Flynn on what he calls public sector inefficiency, in the Daily Express, October 13, 2010:

Yesterday, for example, I was able in a few seconds and a few clicks of a computer mouse to ascertain that the London borough of Barnet paid Wagstaff Interiors Group £766.80 for office furniture on June 22. Was that necessary? Maybe the person who knows will get in touch and explain that it was.

Ah, this takes me back to that 1980s TV satire Brass, in which a job with a stool and a pencil was considered a huge leap in upward mobility. “Tha doesn’t need a chair wi’ a back on to do tha job, lad. Tha mun sit on a box like they do at t’Express.”

 

Leo McKinstry on Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s suggestion that the Government should cap benefits for parents with large families, in the Daily Express, October 8, 2010:

The new approach will be welcomed by most of the public, exasperated by how much of their tax money is wasted on thoughtless, selfish breeders.

Leo’s been watching too many Benny Hill DVDs. What the Japanese gentleman had trouble saying, Leo, was “selfish bleeders”. Rye you no risten?

 

Richard Littlejohn lurches aboard the “selfish breeders” bandwagon, in the Daily Mail, October 8, 2010:

Welfare wasn’t designed to fill children’s bedrooms with Playstations, or finance a fortnight in Magaluf, while keeping them in permanent moral poverty. This week has been dominated by the furore over cuts in child benefit. Of course it is wrong that married couples, where the wife chooses to stay at home and raise her children, should be unfairly penalised.

After slagging off the “shameless slatterns” who do little else but but sponge, Dickie has failed to add that the wife who should not be “unfairly penalised” has a husband earning in excess of £44,000. An easy mistake to make.

 

Quentin Letts on David Cameron’s speech to the Tory party conference, in the Daily Mail, October 7, 2010:

Was he a valiant captain leading his troops into battle? Or Princess Diana moments before entering that Parisian tunnel?

Quent. Not in the best of taste, old boy.

 

Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail, October 7, 2010:

David Cameron and George Osborne believe that the rich should bear a greater burden than the poor as this country sets about trying to live within its means. It is a sentiment with which few decent people would disagree.

I’ll wager a million quid the next word is “But” . . . TA-DAAAAA . . .

 

Two days after his first outburst over planned child benefit cuts for the wealthy, Patrick O’Flynn is still banging the same drum in a column about the Prime Minister’s speech to the Tory conference, in the Daily Express, October 7, 2010:

This is all very well apart from the awkward fact that  Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne have just announced the biggest redistribution of income away from a great many doers and grafters in modern political history.

Well said, young man. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Kind regards, Sheriff of Nottingham.

 

Ann Widdecombe on the “equality laws bequeathed to us by Harriet Harman and shamefully implemented by the current Government”, in the Daily Express, October 6, 2010:

St Paul famously wrote: “When I was a child I thought as a child, spoke as a child, understood as a child but when I became a man I laid aside childish things.” He of course was fortunate enough to live in a state where people were allowed to grow up rather than in 21st-century Britain.

So fortunate was he that in AD64 the state beheaded him.

 

Under a headline that says “Child benefit axe is worst proposal since the poll tax”, Patrick O’Flynn is astonished that Tory cuts are targeting Middle England, in the Daily Express, October 5, 2010:

Even for relatively affluent families losing a couple of hundred pounds a month will wipe out a very large proportion of their disposable income: the stuff that makes life a pleasure rather than just a grind.

Man who has been banging on for weeks about cutting housing benefit for people with little or no disposable income is jolly cross that George Osborne is targeting the middle classes. It’s just not on, apparently.

 

Stephen Glover on George Osborne’s bombshell, in the Daily Mail, October 5, 2010:

But is his announcement fair that child benefits will end in 2013 for taxpayers earning more than £44,000 fair?

More evidence emerges to suggest that when the Conservatives unleashed their rallying cry “We’re all in this together,” many commentators echoed the refrain but very few believed it.

 

Quentin Letts on George Osborne’s “manly” performance, in the Daily Mail, October 5, 2010:

He twisted his face slightly, perhaps an eighth of a turn, so that we saw more of his right cheek. As any supermodel will tell you, a diagonal view is more flattering than a full-on look.

Christ. Grghhh . . . (sound of fingers being thrust down throat)

 

Melanie Philips on the Charity Commission’s decision to recognise druids, in the Daily Mail, October 5, 2010:

Elevating them to the same status as Christianity is but the latest example of how the bedrock creed of this country is being undermined. More than that, it is an attack upon the very concept of religion itself.

And you can’t see what they’re wearing under those gowns. They could be Celtic suicide bombers. Ban the gowns. It’s just not British. And ban those bloody beards.

 

Fraser Nelson in the News of the World, October 3, 2010:

This outbreak of new liberals is so endemic that the Lib Dems talk, in all seriousness, about a “reverse takeover” of the Conservatives. A lot of them never liked being called “right-wing,” – an insult in many parts of the country. It’s right up there with “cat-dumper”.

Cat-dumper. The ultimate insult. Don’t use it unless you’re really vexed.

 

A historically and politically challenged Carole Malone on Harriet Harman’s support for Ed Miliband, in the News of the World, October 3, 2010:

And then of course there’s Harriet Harman who, I suspect, would have supported Himmler if there was something in it for her.

Wrong party, wrong class, Dear. Support for the Nazis was rife in certain sections of the British establishment, with one Tory MP – Archibald Maule Ramsay – spending the duration of the war in prison under Defence Regulation 18B. The Labour Party was on the other side (that’s the Goodies, as opposed to the Baddies) and had been since the early 1930s.

 

Richard Littlejohn on Ed Miliband’s use of the word “generation” in his Labour Party conference speech, in the Daily Mail, October 1, 2010:

Instead of staging a complicated leadership contest, Labour should have asked Brucie to sort it out, Generation Game-style.

Oh, no. You’re not going to bore us with that tiresome, overused formula of yours where your column takes the form of a mock TV show script, are you Dickie? You won’t have Labour politicians lining up to take part in the Generation Game will you, Dickie? Oh . . . You are. You will.

 

Jan Moir on the Labour Party, in the Daily Mail, October 1, 2010:

. . . And not so very long ago, John Prescott was dismissed by Labour top brass as an ongoing mortification; a punch-throwing, Clause 4-loving dinosaur who slept with his secretary and made a fool of himself and everyone else.

Another highly-paid columnist who is not highly-paid enough or sufficiently creative to come up with an alternative to the mid-20^th Century and completely worn-out “dinosaur” insult. Most dinosaurs didn’t have secretaries, by the way. Those that did usually ate them.

 

Peter Oborne berates David Miliband for being a wuss and quitting frontline politics after his brother, Ed, defeated him in the Labour leadership race, in the Daily Telegraph, October 1, 2010:

But this is the New Politics of which Ed Miliband spoke so hopefully on Tuesday. For a reminder of the old, we need to go back to November 1980, when Michael Foot defeated Denis Healey for the Labour leadership. Healey, clearly the more impressive candidate, was fully entitled to feel aggrieved. He knuckled down and served Foot loyally.

It’s a little known fact, this, but not only were Michael Foot and Denis Healey brothers, they were identical twins.

 

Leo McKinstry criticises the “top heavy” structure of the armed forces, in the Daily Express, September 30, 2010:

The reason is that the Ministtry, like so many public sector bodies, is gripped by a destructive culture of waste, profligacy and incompetence.

Professional wordsmiths who brand other professional people incompetent should be careful not to spell “ministry” incorrectly in the same sentence.

 

Sean O’Grady on yesterday’s pan-European demonstrations and riots against austerity measures, in the Independent, September 30, 2010:

The major impact of such scenes is self-defeating. First, in extremis, they can unnerve investors . . . Second, the demos shred confidence, a delicate flower and the only thing that will get Europe’s economy moving again for good.

They should have a nice cup of tea and write a letter to the Times. That would sort things out. And they’d feel so much better.

 

Quentin Letts on Ed Miliband’s inaugural speech to the Labour Party conference, in the Daily Mail, September 29, 2010:

He speaks like a man halfway through a plate of langostinos a la plancha – you know, those Spanish prawn jobs still in their shells. Tricky little devils. Bits of dangly crustacean limb stick out of your mouth and slivers of shell get stuck in your gnashers.

Thanks for that, Quent. But it depends on how messy an eater you are.

 

Ann Widdecombe on “the discredited head of the UN panel on climate change, Dr Rajendra Pachauri”, in the Daily Express, September 29, 2010:

All Dr Pachauri has done is prove what so many of us have suspected for a long time: that the science of climate change is suspect, that too many pronouncements come from non-experts (Dr Pachauri is a railway engineer) and that according the status of holy writ to some of this rot may deliver long-term economic and environmental damage across the globe.

Widdecombe, who for many years made a career in one of the few professions where it’s possible to live an extremely comfortable life by being a “non-expert” without a single qualification, peddles the old “railway engineer” line. “The chap’s a Hindu wheeltapper, for heaven’s sake.” Dr Pachauri’s full list of qualifications and extensive academic career can be found here, on Wikipedia.

 

Leo McKinstry on Ed Miliband, in the Daily Express, September 27, 2010:

After his election for the safe seat of Doncaster in 2005, he served in Brown’s Cabinet as Climate Change Secretary, where he eagerly pursued the green agenda of state bullying over everything from lightbulbs to bin collections.

Oh, how we remember the march of boots in the darkness of night, the fists hammering on the front door and the lightbulb police trampling the carpet. It was the terror of the dimly-lit gulags that converted us to low-energy lighbulbs. Thank God those days have gone for ever.

 

Quentin Letts on Ed Miliband, in the Daily Mail, September 27, 2010:

As happens with tall men, his knees lean together. Shades of baby giraffe.

It’s easy to write stuff like this when you’re a man of perfect physique.

 

Nick Ferrari on the X Factor in the Sunday Express, September 26, 2010:

WHAT do you get if you combine a teenage prostitute, jobless single mother, workshy teenage male scroungers, benefits cheats, happy slappers, weeping fathers, borderline mental defectives and hideous exhibitionists?

Columnist with unimpressive level of talent and undemanding job has a go at ordinary people who want the same thing. Easy targets, easy money.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer discovers a new global phenomenon while discussing Britain’s dire weather, in the Sunday Express, September 26, 2010:

Luckily for us there’s this thing called “global warming” coming up on the hazy horizon. According to the boffins, the Earth’s temperature is going to rise by a good few degrees over the next century and that means Britain will be bathed in Mediterranean-style balmy weather much of the year.

Thanks for that, Julia. Science not the best subject at school, eh?

 

Jimmy Young in the Sunday Express, September 26, 2010:

Health and safety rules, which began with the laudable aim of protecting workers from serious injury, have become complex, overbearing, dictatorial and, in some cases, simply silly.

Another commentator who has never worked in an industry where limbs and lives were frequently lost before the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. Or am I purposely overlooking the great 1933 Shuttleworth studio explosion in which 79 radio broadcasters died?

 

Jeff Randall on how to cut the deficit and restore the economy, in the Daily Telegraph, September 9, 2010:

To achieve this, however, short-term pain is inevitable.

Excuse me while I stifle a yawn. Can we guess which section of society will be inflicting the pain and which will be the recipient? Has this man nothing new to offer?

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, September 8, 2010:

GROSS incompetence has become one of the hallmarks of modern British officialdom. HM Revenue and Customs, which presides over the tax collection, is typical of this pattern of ineptitude.

God, it must be hell in the McKinstry household on the days when nothing nasty happens, there’s no one to harangue and nothing to tear to pieces. He must just sit there and seethe. Absolutely seethe.

 

Quentin Letts attempts to decriminalise criminal offences in the Daily Mail, September 7, 2010:

Does the public care if some denizen of Fleet Street’s gutters managed to snoop on John Prescott’s mobile telephone calls?

Er . . . Yes.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, September 7, 2010:

You’ll just have to bear with me today. I haven’t stopped laughing since I opened the Daily Mail over breakfast.

Dickie confirms something I’ve believed for a long time – there are TWO Daily Mails. One that’s humorous, and one for the rest of us that’s full of cancer stories and misery.

 

Vanessa Feltz ponders some of the deeper meanings of life and the chance of righting past wrongs, in the Daily Express, September 7, 2010:

Life doesn’t often dole out second chances. We make mistakes, learn from them and never have the occasion to use our hard-earned knowledge to rectify our errors. We’d love the opportunity to right wrongs, press the rewind button and give it another go but there’s no such thing as a second bite of the cherry.

Actually, she’s talking about going back on Big Brother. Sorry.

 

Leo McKinstry attacks the unions for protecting members’ jobs, in the Daily Express, September 6, 2010:

Unlike most taxpayers, union ideologues refuse to recognise economic realities.

What is the economic reality? A) Rich bankers cause crisis, economic meltdown and say – it’s okay chaps, we’ll pick up the tab; B) Rich bankers cause crisis, economic meltdown and say – we’re all in this together, but you poor suckers will have to pay with your jobs, living standards, homes and marriages? Answers to Leo at the Daily Express. No rude words.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer comes to the aid of William Hague and his wife, Ffion, in the Sunday Express, September 5, 2010:

Even as I type, ­dozens of tabloid journalists are working round the clock looking for any shred of evidence that Mr Hague might be gay or bisexual. Looking silly in a baseball cap while walking on a public street is apparently evidence enough for some.

Assistant editor (politics) of tabloid newspaper demonstrates outrage at tabloid colleagues doing what they’re paid to do. To paraphrase what Julia said last week about Nick Clegg: “If you don’t like it, lump it or get out.”

 

Patrick O’Flynn jumps on a rickety old bandwagon when discussing the Miliband brothers, in the Daily Express, September 4, 2010:

. . . The answer to that question will go a long way to determining which Miliband they elevate to the party leadership later this month: the Blairite David or his younger brother, the Kinnockite “Red” Ed.

Following in the well-trodden footsteps of Fraser Nelson in last week’s News of the World (and in his Spectator piece of the same day, just for good measure), we have another Red Ed in less than a week. The Daily Mail is also indulging in a Red Ed fest. Whatever these columnists are employed for it’s not their originality, flair, creativity or imagination. If I’d paid for this 1970s-style, cliched, threadbare, junior school journalism I’d want my money back.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, September 3, 2010:

These days, total nonentities have their own websites and Twitter accounts, on which they churn out every mundane opinion and intimate detail of their breathtakingly-dull existences.

I agree, and I wish you’d stop doing it. By the way, you said exactly the same thing on June 1 (see below). Mundane and repetitive.

 

Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express, September 3, 2010:

So far the Miliband-­v-Miliband contest for the Labour leadership has had all the riveting appeal of watching a plank warp.

I must admit, old boy, this made me laugh. And it’s so refreshing, when the rest of the far-right media are calling it civil war and a feud that’s ripping a family apart. Plank warp. Must use that myself sometime.

 

Patrick O’Flynn in the Daily Express, September 1, 2010:

This is why, despite our current economic woes, we are not a basket case like Greece. The option of sitting around smoking cigarettes and waiting for the next lucrative summer season does not exist for most of us.

Not that we’re stereotyping people here, Paddy boy, but they’d save a bit of money if they stopped throwing their dinner plates at the wall.

 

Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph, August 30, 2010:

Like all leading moralists of the age, I have spent the past few days brooding incessantly on the lady who threw the cat into the wheelie‑bin.

More than a week after it was first reported, Boris Johnson adds his contribution to the cat woman debate. Like, er, hasn’t this just about been done to death? Do we really need another 1,000 words on the subject? Can’t he write about something a bit more contemporary like the Black Death?

 

Leo McKinstry goes out of his way to point out it’s a bank holiday – when we know he’s written his column days ago – before banging on about Labour’s spending and why taxation is so high, in the Daily Express, August 30, 2010:

In the late Fifties, the average working man paid no income tax. Today, those on average salaries have to hand over around a third of their earnings to the Government.

By ’ell. He’s reet. I remember cycling ’ome from t’glue factory wi’ nobbut tuppence in mi pocket. But it were MY bloody tuppence. And there were no bugger in a suit gonna take that tuppence off mi.

 

Fraser Nelson discusses the Miliband brothers in the News of the World, August 29, 2010:

Brother David has no interest in this agenda. He’s no Blairite, but hasn’t trashed the Blair reform agenda which union dinosaurs hate.

Columnist who is not sufficiently creative to think up fresh term to insult unions falls back on hackneyed, 1970s dinosaur label. He’ll be calling Ed Miliband Red Ed next . . . oh, he does . . .

 

Carole Malone has a go at fat people in the News of the World, August 29, 2010:

If people really feel they need a gastric band they should pay for it themselves. Maybe if THEY have to find the seven grand the op costs and feel the pain of that, it will be the first step in taking responsibility for their own bodies. Because I’d rather see my money spent on drugs for people with terminal cancers that allow them precious time with the people they love.

Lesson in how to write a column while totally ignoring surgeons on TV all week stating gastric band operations save NHS money in the long term.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, August 27, 2010:

Arjuna Ribindranath ran screaming through a packed carriage with his home-made sheep costume in flames. I wonder if he’s one of the Fraserburgh Ribindranaths.

Does anyone know what this man is on about?

 

The Ephraim Hardcastle column in the Daily Mail, August 26, 2010:

Cluff once fancied becoming a Tory MP and lunched the party’s then candidate selection boss, Marcus Fox. But Yorkshireman Fox reported to colleagues: ‘That Algy Cluff is very ‘ighly stroong.’

Nomination for Most Abysmal Yorkshire Accent in Print Media Award secured for 2010 by imposter from Birmingham.

 

The Reverend Peter Mullen drums up fear and hatred over Islamists, in the Northern Echo – Darlington’s local paper – August 25, 2010:

They are here in such numbers and they go about their terrorist plotting with such impunity that journalist and author Melanie Phillips has described London as “Londonistan”.

Meanwhile, Network Rail chiefs scratch their heads as only empty trains head south on the East Coast mainline to Londonistan, the good Christian folk of Darlington preferring instead to stay at home and lock their doors.

 

Richard Littlejohn directs his razor-sharp intellect at Labour leadership contenders David and Ed Miliband, in the Daily Mail, August 24, 2010:

What is frightening is that this deeply weird Mr Bean lookalike – or his equally alien kid brother – may one day end up as Prime Minister.

Basically: fat man pokes fun at way other people look.

 

Leo McKinstry embarks on a thoughtful and poignant account of the demise of British society – epitomised by Wendy Lewis, the Blackpool woman who urinated on a war memorial – but spoils it all by apportioning blame, in the Daily Express, August 23, 2010:

. . . But all that began to break down in the Sixties, as the Leftwing ideologues gradually seized control of the civic order. In this brave new world respectability was no longer a social glue but a form of oppression, so it had to be destroyed. Moral boundaries were dissolved. The institution of the traditional family was destroyed. The obligation to work disappeared, with the benefits system taking over the role of breadwinner.

That must be the Leftwing ideologues who closed the nation’s pits, steelworks and shipyards – in a nutshell, Britain’s traditional heavy industries – throwing three million people onto the benefits system. It’s about time we got wise to these Trots.

 

Carole Malone musing on a scheme that finances sex trips for disabled people, in the News of the World, August 22, 2010:

Why SHOULD people who are born or become disabled have to spend their lives in boring day centres weaving baskets and playing bingo?

Not that we’re patronising people here, but yes – with the 2012 Paralympics coming up I really do think we should get them out of those basket-weaving centres and into some sort of training.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer attacks the beastly Nick Clegg for criticising class and privilege, in the Sunday Express, August 22:

If Mr Clegg really does believe that life is so unfair in Britain, then why doesn’t he give up his own six-figure salary as Deputy Prime Minister, which by his own argument he only has because of his privileged upbringing?

This is akin to General Gordon standing on the walls of Khartoum and shouting: “If you black chaps don’t like it here, why don’t you just sod off?”

 

Neil Hamilton attacking state education and the fact more pupils are getting more A-levels year on year, in the Sunday Express, August 22, 2010:

I believe the comprehensive experiment since the Sixties has led to levelling down, not levelling up as we were promised . . . If parents could pay for their children’s education, they would ensure they got decent results and value for money.

Too many clever buggers, that’s what’s wrong with this country. What children need is failure. Teaches them a lesson in life. You know it makes sense. Really.

 

Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express, August 21, 2010:

Retiring Cambridge Chief Constable Ms Julie Spence tells us that going even a few miles over the speed limit is a “middle- class hypocrisy”. Actually this is rubbish. Everything depends on the circumstances. To my recall I have been nicked by unseen Gatsos four times. In not one case was I anywhere near a built-up or inhabited area. No driving rain, no poor visibility, no children crossing, no traffic lights or roundabouts.

Meanwhile, low-life scumbag says as he’s being banged up: “Honest guv. I didn’t hurt no one. They went and left the bleedin’ door open. I didn’t break in nor nuffin. I ain’t done no harm. It’s not as if they needed their telly. They’re bleedin’ rich geezers and the insurance’ll pay. Give us a break.” Like the lady said. Middle-class hypocritical law-breakers.

 

The day after the Government announces it is doubling aid from £31m to £60m to help the Pakistan flood victims, Tom Utley – decrying the demise of table manners – shocks Daily Mail readers, August 20, 2010:

Oh dear. Now I’m going to shock yet more readers by confessing that, in the privacy of my home – and, worse, in the presence of my impressionable young – I’ve not been unknown to pick up a chop or a drumstick and gnaw at the bone when I can’t get at the last of the meat with a knife and fork.

And so are the good people of Maildom shocked to the core. Meanwhile, not a single mention of the Government’s aid package on the entire Mail website. I don’t know what this illustrates, if anything. Just make sure you keep your elbows off the table. And don’t talk with your mouths full.

 

Patrick O’Flynn having a go at Nick Clegg while aiming a rabbit punch at Muslim countries for good measure, in the Daily Express, August 19, 2010:

HE MADE a ritual denunciation of the international community for not giving Pakistan enough aid to cope with its floods but naturally no challenge to the fabulously wealthy but notoriously tight-fisted Arab nations to help their Islamic brothers.

Glancing through the Press Association picture queue last night I chanced upon some photographs of military helicopters taking aid to flood victims. I was surprised to see they were not American or British, but belonged instead to a “tight-fisted Arab nation”. Nerd.

 

Ann Widdecombe putting an argument for ending free NHS treatment, in the Daily Express, August 18, 2010:

Effectively we have had rationing in the NHS since its inception when health minister Aneurin Bevan imposed prescription charges because so much medicine was being wasted.

And so is history rewritten and published unchallenged. Bevan resigned from the Labour government in 1951 over proposals to introduce prescription charges – which he opposed. Labour lost the 1952 election before the plan could be effected. Prescription charges were introduced by the incoming Tory government. Fact.

 

Virginia Blackburn brings cyber crooks to our attention in the Daily Express, August 17, 2010:

We are used to thinking of Russian spies as either beautiful femmes fatales or senior members of the British intelligence service but the ones you really want to watch out for are nerdy little hackers with no social skills and a very dangerous aptitude for penetrating the enemy’s defences – all without ever leaving the one room they inhabit in a Soviet apartment block in an insalubrious area of Moscow.

Thanks for the useful tip, Virg. I’ll keep my eyes open next time I’m in an insalubrious area of Moscow. Not that I want to stereotype people here, but I’ve heard they leave their one-roomed Soviet apartment blocks occasionally to buy cabbages.

 

Janet Street Porter in the Daily Mail, August 16, 2010:

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles is my hero.

That’s enough from you, Missis. Thank you and good day.

 

Peter McKay rolls out a number of excuses for why Britain’s £10m in aid is more than enough to help Pakistan’s flood victims, in the Daily Mail, August 16, 2010:

Pakistan can afford to build and maintain nuclear weapons – but not provide clean water to its dying children.

Perhaps in future all those dying, disease-ridden children will think twice before they commission another batch of warheads. Smug prat.

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, August 16, 2010:

Finsbury Park mosque in North London was opened in 1990 as a mainstream institution . . . Yet within just seven years it had been taken over by a bunch of vicious hardliners, led by the one-eyed radical Abu Hamza.

Some people find it  impossible to type “Abu Hamza” without preceding it with “one-eyed”. Severe abusers type “one-eyed, hook-clawed”. It’s a peculiarly British phenomenon. Did the French refer to our greatest maritime hero as the one-eyed, one-armed Nelson? Exactly.

 

Nick Ferrari, a man who doesn’t look like he’s short of a pint of milk, pint of cream, or even a pint of double-fat double cream, advocating the removal of free school milk, in the Sunday Express, August 15, 2010:

However, instead of ordering the about turn and leaving one of his key ministers looking like a flapping fi sh out of water, the PM should have pressed firmly on the accelerator and driven the policy through. Let’s get one thing straight: as a nation, we are broke, skint, bankrupt, impecunious, financially embarrassed, cleaned out; take your pick.

Basically, fat man who will never want for anything says “make children pay” for deficit created by fat men in banking industry – so all fat men can stay fat.

 

Fraser Nelson on David Cameron’s first 100 days as prime minister, in the News of the World, August 15, 2010:

So far, so worrying. He’s announced a slow-mo withdrawal from Afghanistan, regardless of whether we beat the Taliban. Cutting a deal with psychos would be a humiliation. Worse than defeat in Basra. To lose two wars in five years paints an image of weakness which is more provocative than strength.

I’m at a loss here until the library opens when I can check the history books about Britain’s “defeat in Basra” and the assertion the Iraq War was officially “lost”. Meanwhile, I shall give Fraser the benefit of the doubt while assuming that he, like myself and half a million others, marched through London in a vain though worthy bid to halt the illegal invasion and opposed it at every opportunity. I’m sure he did.

 

Leo McKinstry on Tory treachery in the Daily Express, August 12, 2010:

When Conservative prime minister Ted Heath pushed through Britain’s entry into the European Common Market in 1973 he told sceptical voters that the move would involve “no essential loss of sovereignty”. This promise was a blatant deception . . . Since Heath’s spectacular treachery in the early Seventies European federalists have gone a long way towards realising their dream.

One of these days Leo will explain to us why, when the Tories have been so treacherous in the past and that treachery is being repeated today (see his “RAF threat” comment below), he continues to fly to their aid at every election, knowing full well that all he can expect in return is to have his undercarriage shot away.

 

Vanessa Feltz debates the Government’s backtracking on its plan to scrap free milk in schools, in the Daily Express, August 10, 2010:

Was the PM right to gallop to the rescue? Or, in these straitened times is it absurd to provide free milk for all under fives, even the offspring of those who can easily afford to pay for their infants’ beverages?

World recession caused by greedy rich blokes wrecks economy. Columnist considers absurdity of giving free milk to children. After all, why shouldn’t they bloody well pay?

 

Boris Johnson on the trial of Charles Taylor and Nelson Mandela’s dinner party in 1997, in the Daily Telegraph, August 10, 2010:

These are all educated people. Even if they are not all Daily Telegraph readers, they at least have agents who can tell them what’s what in world affairs. So why in heaven’s name were they sitting down to dinner with Mr Charles Taylor, a blood-soaked Liberian warlord?

Apparently, old boy, if this incident had not happened, Mrs Thatcher said she would never, ever, ever, have taken tea with that awful General Pinochet.

 

Leo McKinstry on what he says is a plan to scrap the RAF, in the Daily Express, August 9, 2010:

Yet today it is the RAF’s own existence which is now under deadly threat. As a result of savage defence cuts, a glorious tradition could soon be coming to an end.

Flying ace scrambled in battered Spitfire to attack foreign menace in May’s Big Push circles disorientated after realisation the real enemy is clearing out the Naafi and selling the runway.

 

Peter Hitchens attacking David Cameron’s plan to offer short-term tenancies to council house residents, in the Mail on Sunday, August 8, 2010:

David Cameron, let us not forget, has a heavily subsidised and rather large country home in Oxfordshire. We all helped pay for it. So he is not well-placed to offer lectures to council-house dwellers about how their tenure is too secure.

Blimey. It’s a queer old world when you find yourself agreeing with Hitchy.

 

David Robson in the Daily Express, August 7, 2010:

NAOMI Campbell is no stranger to war crime trials – in 2006 she was in court in New York for assaulting her housekeeper with a jewel-encrusted mobile phone, and that was not the only time.

Common assault cases in New York are classed as war crimes trials, apparently. And this person gets paid? With real money?

 

Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror, August 6, 2010:

Because they have no Royals to fawn over, Americans elevate their President’s wife to the fake-regal position of First Lady.

But they can get rid of her without resorting to the chopping block. It’s less messy and cheaper. You know it makes sense really.

 

Dominic Sandbrook on a Leeds University poll of post-war prime ministers, in which he extols the virtues of Churchill, Attlee and Thatcher. Unfortunately, and inconveniently for his argument, Blair came third from the top of the poll. Undeterred, this is what he says about Blair in the Daily Mail, August 4, 2010:

In this respect, yesterday’s poll is surely mistaken.

Oh. That’s all right then.

 

. . . But wait. Here we have Harry Phibbs in the same paper and commenting on the same poll. Harry develops his own method for skirting round the Blair issue:

Attlee is the winner with Margaret Thatcher in second place. Brown comes in 10th, with Douglas-Home 11th and Eden 12th.

At the foot of the page and 600 words later, we have still not stumbled upon the word Blair. No mention at all. Mind, he always was a slippery bugger.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, August 3, 2010:

We’ve had politicians in our faces for an eternity.

Columnist shares startling revelation with rest of the world.

 

Leo McKinstry on Soham murderer Ian Huntley and the death penalty, in the Daily Express, August 2, 2010:

Hanging would not have been barbarous, as opponents of the death penalty would no doubt argue. It would, in truth, have been an act of the highest morality, providing closure for his victims’ families and justice for our society . . . The truth is that capital punishment is the badge of a civilised society. England was a far gentler, more well-ordered and cohesive place in the Fifties when we executed monsters like Huntley.

And now we’ll put Leo back in his box, gently close the lid, and hope he sleeps softly till we get him out next week. Shhhh . . .

 

Peter Hitchens on speed cameras in the Mail on Sunday, August 1, 2010:

Since the police stopped patrolling the roads, I suspect the cameras have been the last thing between us and anarchy, as selfish, aggressive driving becomes almost universal, much of it drug-influenced.

Hitchy’s been for a drive through Maildom, and possibly into Express-shire, where the police don’t patrol the roads, most drivers are on drugs, and anarchy looms. Meanwhile, back in the real world . . .

 

Jeremy Clarkson, yet another columnist to jump on the burkha bandwagon, in the Sun, July 31, 2010:

LAST week on Top Gear I said that I’d once seen under the burka of a woman who tripped and fell. It was like peering into the middle of an Ann Summers catalogue.

Somewhere in the world a leading academic is researching into why certain men feel threatened and insecure in the presence of women who wear burkhas. I confidently predict that when the results are published, big-car-little-willy syndrome has a large part to play.

 

Jeff Randall writes 1,053 words comparing the Commons rising to the end of a school year, giving prominent politicians a school report, in the Daily Telegraph, July 30, 2010:

With the House of Commons rising this week, the first term is over for the new intake at Cabinet College. And what an exciting 10 weeks it has been – in particular for the Liberal Democrats, who until this year could only dream of winning places at Britain’s most established school for political aspirants.

It’s as  funny as chilblains. Should do better but obviously can’t.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, July 30, 2010:

Bone-idle layabouts who can’t be bothered to look for a job and would rather live on benefits are diagnosed as ‘clinically depressed’ and prescribed a confection of expensive drugs on the NHS. So-called ‘professionals’ have a vested interest in perpetuating the victim culture — which helps explain why five million people in Britain are currently registered as ‘disabled’. Thousands are signed off as disabled purely because they are judged too fat to work.

Bone-idle layabout columnist who can’t be arsed to dig out facts and present them constructively targets fat people, the disabled and “so-called professionals” safe in the knowledge they won’t hit back – and it’s easy money.

 

Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express, July 30, 2010:

Conservative voters were given a flat pledge the Tories would finally clamp down on no-cap immigration and end the incoming tide of foreigners, both EU and non-EU. This cannot now happen because Lib Dem pompous ass Vince Cable doesn’t like it.

Pompous ass? Pot, kettle. Kettle, pot?

 

Stephen Glover on immigration and immigrants, in the Daily Mail, July 29, 2010:

Given a choice between an unskilled Bulgarian (or Romanian) and an Indian businessman, I know where my preferences would lie.

Hmmm . . . Grozna si kato salata.

 

Quentin Letts describes antics in the House of Commons, in the Daily Mail, July 28, 2010:

Fiona Mactaggart gave such a loud shriek it was as though someone had goosed her.

Definition of goosing, a term not widely used by the general public: a poke between or pinch on the buttocks, usually applied by men in blazers, those in a minor position of authority, or young blades whose public school education rendered them inadequate in the social skills department.

 

The Reverend Peter Mullen in the Northern Echo, July 27, 2010:

The immediate danger is nuclear proliferation, beginning in North Korea, Pakistan and Iran and spreading to innumerable terrorist groups anywhere in the world. Countless authorities have warned that it is not a question of if we might come under nuclear attack from one of these groups, but when.

Gosh. But I’ve just booked a flight to Malaga.

  

Steve Richards in the Independent, July 27, 2010:

The dynamics of the coalition still take the breath away even though, like most surprises in politics, its formation was entirely predictable.

Smug tosh written by man whose crystal ball looks backwards.

 

Edward Heathcoat Amory in the Daily Mail, July 27, 2010:

Just imagine that D-Day is only weeks away. Months of secrecy and disinformation have succeeded in confusing the Germans about when or where the inevitable invasion will come. Then an anarchist activist, insisting that in a democracy everyone has the right to know everything, publishes the secret plans for Operation Overlord. Inconceivable then, but today that is precisely what WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, would do in a similar situation.

But then the window to the parallel universe closes softly, leaving Edward Heathcoat Amory trapped on the other side with his Imperial typewriter and strange view of reality.

 

Richard Littlejohn on moves to rid the nation of speed cameras, in the Daily Mail, July 27, 2010:

In a perfect world, we’d take a chainsaw to most of these hideous blots on the landscape, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.

In a perfect world there wouldn’t be a need for them because idiots wouldn’t speed, you oaf.

 

Patrick O’Flynn on the Miliband brothers’ race for the Labour Party leadership title, in the Daily Express, July 27, 2010:

In their case the struggle for pecking order does not just date from their election as MPs it goes way back to the pram. Labour is moving from the  jalfrezi of infighting to the full vindaloo.

Columnist desperate to spice up deathly boring piece that few people will read adds curry terminology. Result: article peaks briefly then saags.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer jumps on the ban-the-burkha bandwagon in the Sunday Express, July 25, 2010:

. . . Which is strange, given that the rest of us are constantly being told what we can and cannot wear with no apparent affront to our civil liberties. Women are told not to go topless on the beach. Men are told they must wear a shirt to be served in pubs and are barred from smart restaurants if they’re not wearing a jacket and tie.

This is Julia attempting to cobble together an argument by comparing Parliamentary legislation to rules laid down by pub landlords and restaurant owners. You’re allowed to write lazy stuff like this at the Sunday Express because, it being Sunday, no one can be arsed to challenge it.

 

Paul Routledge in the Daily Mirror, July 23, 2010:

Ministers say it would be “unBritish” to ban wearing the burkha, or full facial veil, by Muslim women. I agree. But it’s also unBritish to wear the thing in the first place.

Paul Routledge, a man who prefers to clad himself in traditional British clothes and can be seen around town dressed as a morris man, John Bull and occasionally a beefeater. His favourite outfit, though, comprises the green tights, flouncy shirt and judicially placed pheasant feather of a Sherwood Forest woodsman.

 

Quentin Letts, a man who gives you the impression his life has been much more equal than others, derides equality in the Daily Mail, July 23, 2010:

No matter that in our schools and hospitals, state-imposed equality is a menace. No matter that it imposes unnecessary costs on industry. The great god Equality must be worshipped.

Meanwhile, on this very same day, the British Medical Journal reports that the life expectancy gap between rich and poor is at its greatest since records began – even greater than during the Depression. Nice one Quent.

 

Macer Hall compares David Cameron’s visit to the US with the visits of his predecessors, in the Daily Express, July 22, 2010:

Downing Street insiders say Mr Cameron closely followed the error-strewn progress of his predecessors. He was appalled by Blair’s embarrassing poodle act to George Bush, followed by Brown’s unhinged belief that some of the Obama stardust might save his own doomed premiership. Mr Cameron looks back to the diplomatic styles of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, Tory prime ministers with strong US sympathies who nevertheless relentlessly strove to put British interests first.

And so, with a few strokes on a keyboard, we move from the “error-strewn” visits of Blair and Brown to the “straight-talking” tour that was Cameron’s. Would Churchill have got his dates wrong over a major ally’s entry into the war? Would Thatcher have described Britain as a “junior partner” in the special relationship? But the keys have clicked, and the crumbs of history that lodged between them have been conveniently tipped on the carpet.

 

Leo Two Jobs McKinstry writes 1,179 words on the fiendishly evil forces manipulating the men who empty our bins, in the Daily Mail, July 21, 2010:

In the hands of the commissars who have come to predominate in British official life, the bin service is now used as an instrument not just for enforcing the fashionable green agenda, but also for encouraging an authoritarian mix of state intrusion and race-fixated social engineering.

Leo. Shhhh. They’re out there now. Can’t you hear the boots? They smear thallium on the bin handles. Wear Marigold gloves at all times – and one on your head to fool the iris recognition cameras.

 

Ann Widdecombe in the Daily Express, July 21, 2010:

SIBOHAN O’Dowd, whose grammar is as poor as her morality, tells us between drags on her cigarette that “it were funny” that Raoul Moat eluded the police for a week and that the crazed gunman is a legend in her house.

Eleven days after his death, ghoulish onlookers continue to publicise a madman and his crimes – increasing his chances of immortality.

 

Sue Carroll making a point about burkhas, in the Daily Mirror, July 20, 2010:

And it’s hard to imagine a GP, nurse or airline pilot reaching the required levels of professionalism in restricting swathes of cloth. I would guess being a National Hunt jockey is also out of the question.

Let’s add bishops, high court judges, barristers and bee-keepers to the list. And freemasons would look pretty silly jumping the first fence with one trouser leg rolled up and their frilly pinnies flying.

 

Jan Moir churns out 1,330 words slagging off Stella and Paul McCartney and finishes her enlightening piece with this quote, in the Daily Mail, July 20, 2010:

Yet despite this, they continue to inflict themselves upon us. Where would we be, without their collected wit and wisdom and little meat-free nuggets of advice? In a much happier place, perhaps.

Get a life.

 

Dominic Lawson in the Independent, July 20, 2010:

Who knew it would be so easy to save the planet? This is the first paragraph from a disconcertingly encouraging story in yesterday’s Independent: “Curry spices could hold the key to reducing the enormous greenhouse gas emissions given off by grazing animals such as sheep, cows and goats, scientists have claimed.”

Dom. This story did the rounds on July 6. Even the scientifically challenged Littlejohn did a piece on it on July 9 (see below). What do you lot at the Independent need to get you moving? And don’t say a vindaloo.

 

Boris Johnson in the Daily Telegraph, July 19, 2010:

Lurking in the childhood of anyone ambitious there is always the memory of some humiliation that sets them on the path of self-improvement. Show me a billionaire, and I will show you someone who was beaten up for his lunch money.

Boris paves the way for an announcement by Education Secretary Michael Gove later this week that children will be routinely beaten up in schools and their dinner money used to patch the leaking roofs that would have been replaced under Building Schools for the Future. Some will become billionaires. Some will become crazed gunmen with a huge grudge against society.

 

James Forsyth on David Cameron’s visit to the US, in the Daily Mail, July 19, 2010:

There is one aspect of David Cameron’s visit to the United States that is puzzling his hosts before he even arrives: why is the schedule being dictated by travel time-tables? . . . The Prime Minister is so keen to show that ‘we are all in this together’ and to prove that austerity begins at home that he is taking commercial flights to America.

I feel so reassured and moved. I am reminded of that 1939 book by John Steinbeck in which an entire family, their lives wrecked by another rich-man’s recession, crossed America on easyJet fast-boarding tickets to a new and prosperous life on the West Coast. Yes, we’re all in this together.

 

Carole Malone shooting down the notion that crazed gunman Raoul Moat (hero-worshipped by “sicko single mum” Siobhan O’Dowd and “38,000 other sickos”) was a victim of the State, in the News of the World, July 18, 2010:

Eh? Our State doesn’t oppress the poor. It babies them, it buys them cars, puts a roof over their heads, pays their bills, buys their plasma TVs. How is THAT oppressive?

Shocking. We give them plasma TVs and this is how they repay our gratitude. They should be made to eat turnips.

 

Nick Ferrari in the Sunday Express, July 18, 2010:

Close your eyes for a moment or two and call to mind who you would think of as a hero or legend. Many of you will have gone, I would imagine, for political greats such as Winston Churchill, some for religious figures such as Jesus Christ or Pope John Paul II, some for sports stars or musicians, although their currency has been a little tarnished of late.

My eyes are closed, Nick, and I’m recalling my legend. I love stuff like this. I can see George Formby wearing motorcycle goggles and he’s doing ninety in the TT races. So what are you writing about Nick? I’m sure it won’t be the ghoulish hero worship of Raoul Moat because he’s been absolutely done to death – so to speak – by tabloid commentators this week. Who is it? Oh . . . .

 

Patrick O’Flynn, demonstrating he is a man obsessed with housing benefit by writing his second column on the subject in a week, in the Sunday Express, July 18, 2010:

It was left to Conservatives to defend the interests of the striving classes who have been underwriting the housing benefit racket for far too long.

Blimey. The the Tories are defending the “striving classes”. A word of advice, Paddy boy. Strive a bit harder and think of something new to write about. The striving classes don’t strive so workshy, back-office pen-suckers like you can put your feet up. Slacker.

 

Leo McKinstry tells us in his friendly and avuncular fashion why Britain should introduce a burkha ban, in the Daily Express, July 15, 2010:

#### # # ##### ## # #### #### ## # ####### ######## ### # #### ## ## ## # ##### ### #### ####### ### #### #####. ###### ## # # ###### #### ####-##### #######, ##### #### ######### ### #####!

Bloody hell, Leo. My computer has just sent me a message saying “ERROR 5921: The text you are attempting to paste is complete gibberish and is not recognisable in any of the world’s major languages.” Should have written about the Nile pan toilets in Rochdale, old boy.

 

Quentin Letts on the debate over Education Secretary Michael Gove’s ill-fated schools list, in the Daily Mail, July 13, 2010:

Mr Gove, spindly of limb, delicate of phrase, is the adopted child of a fish trader. He has reached upwards in his dialectic and demeanour, picking apart policy matters with the precision of a fishmonger removing the smaller bones from a mackerel’s flank.

Quent. Precision? The bloke’s just sliced three of his own fingers off. Stop writing bollocks.

 

Patrick O’Flynn on why poor people receiving housing benefit should not be allowed to live in rich people’s houses – as one family is apparently doing in Notting Hill – in the Daily Express, July 13, 2010:

One can hardly blame this family for making use of a system that has seemingly been purpose-built to allow welfare claimants with huge families to live like kings.

This is exactly how I felt when picking up my housing benefit cheques during three periods of enforced redundancy in the Thatcher-Major era. “By ’ell,” I used to say to the missis. “I feel just like a king.”

 

Boris Johnson advocating the swallowing of chewing gum as an alternative to dropping it in the street, in the Daily Telegraph, July 12, 2010:

Think of the things that are pummelled every day in the muscular bag of acid that serves as the average British stomach. Think of the prawn heads, the vindaloos, the industrial quantities of gristle and bone that are chomped in the course of one evening of fried chicken – and we balk at a tiny bit of tree-sap!

There are 1,029 words in this column dedicated to the curse of chewing gum and how to get rid of it. Only two days ago I sat in a sunny field and listened to his rival, Ken Livingstone, address the Durham Miners’ Gala with a speech about building a better world and a better future. Curiously, Ken didn’t broach the subject of chewing gum. A major tactical error on his part?

 

Leo McKinstry on the Raoul Moat saga (complete with original typographical errors), in the Daily Express, July 12, 2010:

Society is a better place without him. by shooting himself, moat has made his own contribution to reducing britain’s fiscal deficit.

Angry, irrational and insecure man on loose with keyboard discharges volley of words at random targets in vain hope of justifying column. Result: shoots himself in glare of world’s media – but only in the foot.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer attempting to justify the government’s axing of the Building Schools for the Future programme by saying we need better teachers not better buildings, in the Sunday Express, July 11, 2010:

We wouldn’t suffer bad doctors, so why force our children (or someone else’s) to put up with bad teachers? At least if you get a bad doctor, you have a right to a second opinion. Children don’t get a second chance at their education.

Julia. Why draw the line at “bad” teachers and “bad” doctors, all of whom are qualified in their respective subjects? What about bad journalists, of which there are dozens on our nationals, commenting on subjects they know little about and in which they are certainly not qualified?

 

Richard and Judy in the Daily Express, July 10, 2010:

WHERE there’s muck, there’s brass. Or rather, where there’s elf and safety, there’s easy money to be made.

The latest commentators to trot out the lame and derogatory “elf and safety” cliché – a term used by people who’ve never worked in industries where eyes, hands, limbs and lives were lost on a daily basis before the introduction of the 1974 Health and Safety at Work Act. Smug pillocks. Get a proper job or at least do your own professionally.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, July 9, 2010:

Researchers at Newcastle University have been investigating ways of reducing the amount of methane pumped out by sheep. They have discovered that feeding the animals curry spices such as ground coriander and turmeric can cut methane output by up to 40 per cent. Funny, I’ve always found that curry has the opposite effect on me.

This is Littlejohn revealing the secret behind the copious amounts of material he churns out.

 

Quentin Letts on former Foreign Secretary David Miliband listening to David Cameron announce an inquiry into alleged torture cover-ups, in the Daily Mail, July 7, 2010:

Not even some horrible grammar by Mr Cameron, who uses ‘myself’ where he should use the first person singular, can lift Mr Miliband’s mood.

Never did have a sense of humour. I was rolling in the aisles myself.

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, July 5, 2010:

Bureaucracy is all around us, bullying, lecturing, probing, or grabbing our cash. The State monitors everything from the contents of children’s lunch boxes to the lightbulbs we use.

Leo. Look under your bed. They’re there, monitoring your fluff balls. And when they’ve collected the regulation amount, they’re going to come out and get you.

 

Jimmy Young having a senior moment in the Sunday Express, July 4, 2010:

I have nothing against regional accents, my soft West Country lilt was probably an asset in my career, but the basic requirement of broadcasting is to communicate clearly and in a way that everyone can understand. My complaint is that too many modern actors and actresses appear to have studied at the Marlon Brando Academy of

. . . Er, yes? Is that it then?

 

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday, July 4, 2010:

I would be interested to know how the self-styled ‘artist’ Fiona Banner can claim any real credit for the retired Sea Harrier hung by its tail from the ceiling of what I think in future must be called the Tat Gallery in London. Did she hoist it up there herself? Could she, sat alone in a room with a pencil and a sheet of paper, make a decent drawing of a Boeing 747 from memory?

I went to see this last week, Hitchy, and it’s dead good. There were more people looking at this than at that Turner bloke’s stuff in the next room. Get real.

 

Michael Cole on Nick Clegg’s Spanish wife landing a job with a Spanish company that hopes to erect wind turbines in Britain, in the Daily Mail, June 10, 2010:

Is this idea to despoil what is left of our countryside mere revenge for the defeat of the Spanish armada?

Christ.

 

Quentin Letts on Diane Abbott and the Labour Party leadership contest, in the Daily Mail, June 10, 2010:

Miss Abbott certainly wins the parliamentary sketch writers’ vote.

Quent. They haven’t got one.

 

Leo McKinsty on Mark Servotka’s warning that the Government faces widespread strikes over cuts, in the Daily Express, June 10, 2010:

For the economically illiterate union chiefs the only acceptable course is to impose more taxes on the rich.

As opposed to the economically literate solution: rich, greedy, grasping bankers cause worldwide recession; poor people pay with their jobs, their homes and their marriages. Yeh, right.

 

Matthew Norman on former Labour ministers writing their memoirs, in the Independent, June 9, 2010:

The peculiar thing about this plethora of memoirs is that, outside the political anorak community, I can’t believe anyone is remotely interested.

Journalist who writes words few people read complains about politicians writing words that some people might want to read. Little pot, big kettle.

 

Alex Brummer comparing running a shop to running a country, in the Daily Mail, June 9, 210:

Sir Terry Leahy’s reign as chief executive of Tesco matches almost exactly the period that New Labour occupied Downing Street. As Leahy prepares to hang up his apron at Britain’s biggest grocer, the contrast between his achievements and those of the wasted Blair-Brown years could not be greater.

Alex. For every successful shopkeeper there are thousands of mediocre ones and thousands who go bust. That’s what makes the successful ones successful. So if we extend your comparison to its logical limit and send all the successful shopkeepers to sort out the Taliban, the world will be a safer place – will it? Or is running a country just a teeny bit more complicated than running a shop?

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, June 8, 2010:

Ski Scotland has just recorded its best season in 14 years, thanks to record snowfalls. Curiously, this historic news didn’t seem to make any BBC radio or television bulletins. Nothing to do with ‘global warming’ then.

No, it’s to do with a late snowfall. And it’s not historic. Silly pillock.

 

Leo McKinstry talking rubbish about Labour’s plan to introduce a bin tax, in the Daily Express, June 7, 2010:

Thankfully the new Government is promising to dismantle this legacy. Democracy, claim the Tory-Liberal Democrat politicians, will be restored. Unnecessary taxes and the apparatus of officialdom’s surveillance will be removed. As a welcome start the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, a commonsense Yorkshireman with long experience of local government, is announcing today that the Government is to ditch Labour’s plan to impose so-called “pay as you throw” charges right across the country, under which householders would be billed by the council on the basis of how much rubbish they put in their bins.

Leo. I think you should take a look at your own paper which is, this very same day, carrying a story about Lib Dem councillors hiring what the Express calls ‘BIN POLICE’ to search through people’s bin-bags and fine them up to £1,000 if they chuck out the wrong kind of rubbish. Some joined-up journalism would be appreciated.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer using the most overworked cliché of the year to end her column about mass murderer Derrick Bird, in the Sunday Express, June 6, 2020:

We can only wonder how many more Derrick Birds there are out there, apparently normal but silently suffering in misery, despair and bitter anger, and how many more potential victims will never know how perilously close they have come to being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Julia. If I had £5 for every time a journalist has used the phrase “in the wrong place at the wrong time” this week I’d be a very rich man. For Christ’s sake, can’t you write something original? Can’t you string words together in a form that hasn’t been exploited to utter exhaustion by other lazy sods who can’t be arsed to use their imagination? Is it beyond your ability? What do they pay you for?

 

Richard Littlejohn on Deputy Chief Constable Stuart Hyde, the police officer thrust to the centre of the Cumbrian massacre investigation, in the Daily Mail, June 4, 2010:

I shuddered to think of the reaction of a bereaved relative who had just been told that a loved one had been shot dead and had turned on the TV to hear a police spokesman banging on about the effects on tourism. My colleagues tell me that Hyde is a decent copper, trotting out the new-style Plodspeak dictated by the modern breed of sociologists with scrambled egg on their hats who masquerade as chief police officers.

In a nutshell. Police officer does incredibly hard job while at centre of world attention. Smug, fat, arrogant gobshite takes pop at him from safety of comfortable office 300 miles away.

 

Virginia Blackburn, a columnist who obviously doesn’t climb mountains lecturing people about the dangers of climbing mountains, in the Daily Express, June 4, 2010:

No doubt there is joy in achieving these feats and pleasure in applauding them but we underestimate the challenges at our peril. The death of even one young person prompts the question: is this journey really necessary?

No it isn’t. Likewise, is this column really necessary? No it isn’t.

 

Quentin Letts on the first prime minister’s question time, in the Daily Mail, June 3, 2010:

First question came from Douglas Carswell (Con, Clacton), the Popeye lookalike who has become the John the Baptist of parliamentary reform.

Quent. I can’t get my head round this. There’s too much going on. Did John the Baptist look like Popeye? Is Douglas Carswell going to get his head cut off? Have you eaten too much spinach?

 

Giles Coren in the Times, June 1, 2010:

When I’ve been involved in an accident myself, in the past, I have often tried to recruit witnesses from among the roadside gawpers and gogglers who inevitably gather round.

Bloody hell. Like, how many car crashes have you had, pal? “I have often tried to recruit witnesses” – often? It’s people like you who put our premiums up. Keep off the roads, for Christ’s sake.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, June 1, 2010:

The cult of Twitter continues to elude me. It’s a type of technological Tourette’s. I can’t imagine why so many people want to provide a running commentary on their lives, posting every mundane thought on the internet. Or why anyone would be remotely interested in reading it.

Er, pardon me, Dickie, but isn’t this exactly what you do for a living? Oaf.

 

Jimmy Young in the Sunday Express, May 30, 2010:

David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, says he will use “a scalpel rather than a chainsaw”.

He got caught by the chainsaw before you went to press, old boy. Keep up, there’s a good chap.

 

Richard Littlejohn on realising he’s been hoodwinked by the Tories, in the Daily Mail, May 28, 2010:

The clear message was that, for too long, the law-abiding, taxpaying, middle classes have had the odds stacked against them. Vote Tory and we’ll give you a break. Unfortunately, that’s not how events are beginning to pan out.

More than half of the electorate saw this coming, pal, so it serves you right. But why label the middle-classes “law-abiding, taxpaying”? Does this mean the rest of us are “law-breaking, benefit scroungers”? Prat. Get a proper job.

 

The Reverend Peter Mullen’s weekly sermon of charm and enlightenment, in the Northern Echo, May 26, 2010:

Gordon Brown increased the number of public sector employees by 850,000. And we know why. It was to create – Soviet style – his client state: to produce a whole section of society bribed everlastingly to vote Labour.

Oh, how we waved those scarlet banners above our martyred dead, we valiant warriors of the class struggle. Was it all for nothing? Stalingrad, Leningrad, Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath . . . ? Meanwhile, back in the physical world . . .

 

Quentin Letts on the state opening of Parliament, in the Daily Mail, May 26, 2010:

The Queen made ‘enable’ sound like two words. The Bishop of London luxuriated in his beard and hatless Samantha Cameron watched from above, stretching her neck like a young mother swan.

Jesus Christ, Quent. Arghhhhgrhhh . . . (fingers down throat again).

 

Nick Ferrari defending BP and its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Daily Express, My 26, 2010:

Try telling any of this though to the fair-trade- coffee-drinking, Peruvian-knitted-hat-wearing, Windward-Islands-banana-munching, green do-gooders and they’re likely to collapse in a swoon on to their stripped-pine floorboards and take to their futons.

Bit of standard and predictably-boring stereotyping by a flabby-cheeked, flat-arsed, cushy-jobbed, by-standing, opinionated journo who by self-definition is either a do-badder or a do-nothing-at-all-except-moan-about-it-er.

 

Richard and Judy in the Daily Express, May 24, 2010:

I SIMPLY don’t know what to make of the so-called Peace Camp on the previously pristine lawns of Parliament Square.

Then you’re not going to write a column about it, are you? Oh, you are . . .

 

Richard Littlejohn on the European Convention on Human Rights, in the Daily Mail, May 21, 2010:

Imagine if our modern legal system had been around after the war and the entire Nazi high command had managed to escape here. This is how it might have been reported . . .

Same old formula. We’re bored already, Dickie.

 

Ben Macintyre torpedoing the notion – usually put forward by those with a vested interest in retaining the status quo – that class is no longer an issue in Britain, in the Times, May 19, 2010:

“True,” I conceded. “But they are not the same species of posh. David Cameron is Eton-Oxford-country- clubby-cutglass-shooting party sort of posh, whereas Nick Clegg is Westminster-Cambridge- metropolitan-foreign-glottalstop-trustfund sort of posh. Cameron is upper-upper-middle class with a dash of English gentry, but Clegg is middle-upper-middle class with a hint of European aristocracy. These are quite different things.”

When, like me, you’re state-comprehensive, college-of-further-education, shipyard apprenticeship, chipped-glass, curry-party sort of oikish with a touch of rural Cumbrian, aspiring peasant, bollocks-to-the-lot-of-the-wealthy-idle-marshmallow-cheeked-puffy-palmed-pillocks oikishness, you find this sort of stuff deliciously entertaining and reassuring.

 

Quentin Letts on the the first day back in the Commons, in the Daily Mail, May 19, 2010:

They gathered yesterday for the first time and there was so much moist-bottomed excitement it could have been a group outing by the Sisters of Mercy to a Boyzone gig.

Quent. This has a very unsavoury air about it. And we really don’t need to know about the state of your bottom.

 

Peter Hitchens unashamedly diverging from his theme, in the Daily Mail, May 18, 2010:

This is explored in my book ‘The Abolition of Liberty’ (and by the way, readers seeking to find my books in bookshops, as one says she sought to do, will generally be disappointed. Few bookshops will stock them, as the publishing and bookselling industry is almost completely dominated by left-wing persons. But they can be got by ordering them, provided you spell my name right, or you can go to the internet booksellers).

Hitchy. Sedgefield car boot sale. There’s a pile of them propping up the Mills and Boon stall.

 

An absolutely outraged Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, May 18, 2010:

Alice O’Brien, from Bognor Regis, emails to say she had a jar of Marmite confiscated at Gatwick on her way to a holiday in Turkey – just another small example of the way in which anti-terror measures are used to persecute the law-abiding.

I should think so too. Haven’t the Turks got enough to worry about without inflicting Marmite upon them?

 

Harry Phibbs in the Daily Mail, May 18, 2010:

Trampling on the fragile economic recovery with tax hikes on the wealth creators does not make economic sense. Nor is this politically justifiable. There is no mandate for it. The British people did not throw Labour out of office in order to have higher taxes.

Honestly. You Daily Mail columnists. Moan, moan moan before the election; moan, moan, moan after it. Get a life.

 

Melanie Phillips on the Cameron-Clegg coalition, in the Daily Mail, May 17, 2010:

As a result, authentic Conservatives find themselves abandoned – and implicitly demonised as neanderthals by a Conservative Prime Minister.

This is an unwarranted and vicious attack on neanderthals, a progressive and essential link in our evolutionary chain and not demonic in any sense. Neanderthals had human rights too, you know, Mel.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer on the Cameron-Clegg alliance, in the Sunday Express, May 16, 2010:

The only thing missing is that ­secret ingredient that every marriage, royal, political or otherwise, needs to survive: love.

Christ, Julia. Give us a break. Arghhrgghhh . . . (sound of finger being stuck down throat)

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Sunday Express, May 9, 2010:

This time, while the politicians know how bad things are going to get, it is the voters burying their heads in the sand and refusing to accept that Britain is facing the biggest public spending cuts in generations to pay off a record £163billion deficit.

Translation: We promised them pain today and jam tomorrow and the ungrateful, pig-ignorant oiks still refused to vote for us.

  

Quentin Letts socialising with the Camerons before the election count, in the Daily Mail, May 7, 2010:

Then Samantha Cameron cooked chili con carne for her husband. Not long after midnight, an apparently buoyant Mr Cameron walked in to the New Inn, Witney, to have a jar with a thick throng of friends and supporters.

Quent. They can’t all have been thick. Bit of a generalisation, I think, and completely uncalled for.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, May 7, 2010:

If we eventually get round to banning burkas, can we also prohibit hoodies, baseball caps and low-slung trousers? I can’t see the difference between a bird dressed up as a pillar box and a youth hiding his identity under a hood.

And can we add rude, irritating blokes who habitually bore us with their insecurities and prejudices to the list?

 

Quentin Letts on David Cameron’s 24-hour election campaign dash, in the Daily Mail, May 6, 2010:

Wales beckoned: The hills of Montgomeryshire, where LibDem laydees’ man Lembit Opik is, for once, fighting to save a seat rather than chase it.

Quent. This is bordering on humour. Careful . . .

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, May 4, 2010:

I’m not going to revisit all the sins of Labour over the past 13 years. If there’s any regular reader of this column who intends to vote Labour on Thursday, I might as well give up now and get a job selling the Big Issue.

Dickie. Go to www.bigissue.com. Keep the change, my man.

  

Jimmy Young putting the argument for smacking children, in the Sunday Express, May 2, 2010:

Corporal punishment is banned in schools but mild smacking, in other words a smack that conveys a message but does not leave a mark, is permitted at home. Anyone who has watched a nature programme on television and has seen a lioness give a mischievous cub a little cuff with her paw will get the picture.

So today we say to the kids: “No Sunday roast. We’re going to wander into the nearest field, single out a vulnerable lamb, separate it from its mother, run it into the ground and rip it to pieces. No mischief or I’ll bloody cuff you.” Or are we a bit more civilised than that?

 

Quentin Letts on the final party leaders’ debate, in the Daily Mail, April 30, 2010:

Things kicked off with David Dimbleby shouting: ‘Tonight! Who do you want to be our next Prime Minister?’ So loud was his first word that I jumped and instinctively clutched the forearm of a Sunday Times ace beside me in the press room.

Bloody wuss.

 

Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express, April 30, 2010:

LET me tell you something deeply boring.

Wow. Great intro Freddie. That’s as far as I got.

 

Quentin Letts on the Gordon Brown gaffe, in the Daily Mail, April 29, 2010:

Readers, I was there when Labour leader met the pride of Lancastrian womanhood.

Quent’s on the front line having an “I WAS that soldier” moment. Just in case we didn’t see him on the telly, he’s letting us know that – like John Wayne at the crucifixion – he witnessed the event. And he was so excited he missed a word out, bless him.

 

Melanie Phillips on the standards of staff at the Foreign Office and its recruitment policy, following an apology to the Vatican about a document insulting the Pope, in the Daily Mail, April 26, 2010:

A concerted effort began to recruit from beyond the ranks of the privileged — in other words, those who had a reliable standard of education because they had been to the best schools — in favour of those from every kind of disadvantage. For whom, of course, the standard had to be lowered.

Ah, that’s the problem! If you don’t want to insult the Pope, don’t employ oiks from state schools. But pardon me, isn’t the biggest insult to the Pope the law enacted by “the ranks of the privileged” that denies Catholics access to the highest job in the land?

 

Jimmy Young in the Sunday Express, April 25, 2010:

My guess is that politicians, especially the Conservatives, are reluctant to discuss immigration because of the fear they will be accused of being racist. Twenty five per cent of all births in England and Wales are now to foreign-born mothers and that rises to 50 per cent in London.

So if the Conservatives aren’t racist and you’re not racist, what’s your problem? If foreign-born parents are an issue, let’s start with Prince Philip then work down.

 

Quentin Letts on last night’s election debate, in the Daily Mail, April 23, 2010:

Fathers For Justice graced us with their presence and an anti-war group yelled abuse when Mr Brown arrived. On arrival, we were greeted by a recording of jungle drums. You could almost sense Red Indians on the brow of the distant Cotswolds.

Quent. You’re at it again. In the space of two sentences you plonk us in the jungle, where – listening to drums – we suddenly realise we are actually in the Black Hills of Dakota. For Christ’s sake, I wish someone would shoot an arrow through your bloody hat.

 

Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express, April 23, 2010:

The Lib Dems’ Left wing is the real barmy army. They truly believe in the brotherhood of man, unilateral disarmament, peace on demand, world government and gathering nuts in May.

Freddie. The nuts in April are for more entertaining.

 

Quentin Letts touring an Asda store with William Hague, in the Daily Mail, April 22, 2010:

Chatham voter Kevin Connell spotted Mr Hague hurtling down the alley, accompanied by TV crews, Asda executives and one yawning sketchwriter.

Quent. It’s just become apparent why I always nod off before I get to the end of your gently meandering, ten-times-round-the-playing-fields columns. You can’t keep your eyes open yourself.

 

Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail, April 22, 2010:

The Cold War was won by the West as a result of nuclear deterrence. Without it, the much more powerful red Army would probably have invaded Western Europe decades ago and we might all be driving around in Ladas and getting drunk on cheap vodka.

Steve. I wish they’d put it to us like that back in the 1980s: Do you want four hugely expensive submarines to make the Russians laugh, or lots of reliable cars and cheap booze? We wouldn’t be having this discussion now.

 

Quentin Letts on Vince Cable, in the Daily Mail, April 21, 2010:

Poor old Vince. A week ago he was the one being feted as the Lib Dems’ great hope. Now he has been shunted to the back of the train shed and the media are clambering over a different locomotive. Like Puff the Magic Dragon, Vince is suddenly ignored. No one wants to play with him any more. Boo hoo!

Quent. What’s Puff the Magic Dragon doing in a train shed? And another thing. Puff the Magic Dragon wasn’t suddenly ignored – Little Jackie Paper died, you plonker.

 

Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, April 20, 2010:

Moaners who say David Cameron is mere spin are talking freeze-dried horse manure. I went down to Brighton yesterday to see the Tory leader take questions from a hall of potential first-time voters. They gave him a hard time. He gave it right back.

Quent. “He gave it right back.” They were sixth formers, for heaven’s sake. Is it primary school kids tomorrow?

 

Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, April 19, 2010:

I know I will annoy many of you by continuing to urge you not to vote for David Cameron’s anti-British, pro-crime, anti-education, pro-immigration rabble. I am often asked to explain why. If you really wish to know please read my book, The Cameron Delusion.

Gosh, Hitchy. Thanks for that outrageous example of self-publicity. I see it’s been reduced from £9.99 to £5.99 on Amazon, with FREE delivery.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer on the televised leaders’ debate, in the Daily Express, April 19, 2010:

Perhaps for the next debate, on sky News this thursday, they’ll bring on that dancing dog from Britain’s Got talent for a bit of light relief halfway through. It’ll help make Gordon Brown look more statesmanlike anyway.

Oh no. Julia’s doing humour. Don’t go there, Julia. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease. It’s just not you, dear.

 

Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, April 19, 2010:

The past few days have seen the start of the latest series of the popular but vacuous light entertainment show Britain’s Got Talent. They have also seen the start of an equally vacuous light entertainment show called Britain’s Got Politics.

Mel. Julia’s already done a Britain’s Got Talent gag. Please try harder.

 

Leo McKinstry on Nick Clegg, in the Daily Express, April 19, 2010:

He heads agroup of left-wing politicians who favour European integration, unilateral nuclea disarmament, the abolition of the pound and more incometax. His party is soft on drugs,bogus asylum seekers, welfarescroungers and is ideologicallyopposed to prison as a punishment for most criminals.

Leo. This is badly-written, badly-typed, badly-proofed drivel. If you and your paper are representative of the arseholes who want to govern our country and educate our children, then God help us all.

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, April 9, 2010:

According to the Office of National Statistics, almost every single new vacancy in the economy since 1997 has effectively gone to a foreigner, with immigrants having filled an incredible 98.5 per cent of the 1.67 million new jobs during the last 13 years of Labour rule.

Bloody hell. So those millions of benefits scroungers filling our job centres and sponging off the state must be Brits. The lazy-arsed pillocks. We really must do something about them, Leo.

 

Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, April 8, 2010:

There sat the Cabinet on the Government bench, possibly for the final time. Sailors in a leaky submarine. As in Das Boot, Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 film about a U-boat, they retained their professionalism but demonstrated scant enthusiasm for the cause to which they found themselves lassooed.

Quent. Love the imagery. In the space of three short sentences you start off in a submarine and end up in a cowboy film. And they pay you for this?

 

Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, April 7, 2010:

In Downing Street, the Prime Minister left for Buckingham Palace at 10am. He came bowling out of the front door at a burly lick. ‘Are you going to win?’ I shouted. Mr Brown flashed a smile which seemed to say ‘you daft or something?’

Quent. You haven’t given us the answer.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer on strikes in the public sector, in the Express, April 4, 2010:

If they don’t then it’s not the Spring of Discontent we should be worrying about, it is the Summer of Outrage from hardworking private sector workers fed up with this modern-day jobs apartheid.

Julia, you’ve fallen for the Daily Mail trick – using the word “apartheid” totally out of context and as a means of demonstrating a difference between two things. People who do this, I find, were usually quite comfortable with the apartheid system in the first place and are oblivious to the baggage that comes with it.

 

Richard Littlejohn on the laws Labour have introduced, in the Daily Mail, April 1, 2010:

Did you know that riding a bicycle without a bell carries a fine of £2,500 and up to two years in jail?

I should think so, too. And what about those stainless steel teapots that dribble all over the table when you pour them? They’ve been making them for 40 years, and cafes still insist on using them. Surely we need the death penalty reintroducing.

 

Sermon on the EU by the Reverend Peter Mullen, in the Northern Echo, April 1, 2010:

Then, there is the bureaucratic elite’s lie that European culture and values will be preserved: what they are really up to is fixing immigration policy on a model which will create a Europe essentially Muslim within a generation. When Turkey becomes an EU member, 75 million Turks – mostly Muslims – will have the right to settle here.

Blimey. I’m off. Turkey looks a safe bet.

 

Richard Littlejohn, banging on about hate crime in the Daily Mail, March 31, 2010:

This puts the power of prosecution in the hands of any self-righteous, malevolent mischief-maker, of which we have no shortage.

Self-righteous, malevolent mischief-makers. No shortage. That’s pretty plain to see.

 

Quentin Letts on the Chancellor debate, in the Daily Mail, March 30, 2010:

The three suited contestants, equal in height, stood at three lecterns. George Osborne was the only one who had buttoned his jacket.

Quent. Never trust a man who buttons his jacket because it means he probably tucks his shirt in his underpants.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, March 30, 2010:

Britain seems to have cornered the market in welfare layabouts, drug addicts, feral gangs of obese children and hideous, drunken scrubbers, littering the gutters of even our more genteel suburbs.

No, not the genteel suburbs? Dickie, your make-believe world is breaking out of its “sink estates”. Good job Dr Who’s returning on Saturday to save us all.

 

Jeremy Clarkson in the Times, March 26, 2010:

I am completely baffled by the British Airways strike.

Right . . . ? So there’s not much point uploading 1,066 words on the subject, is there? Oh no – there is, there is, there is . . .

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, March 26, 2010:

There’s no escape from the enforced metrication of Britain. This week, on the Today programme, a gallant royal Navy veteran in his 80s was interviewed about his role as a midshipman on the Russian convoys. He described his ship as ’200 metres’ long and spoke of waves ’17 metres’ high. And coming up next, radio 4′s Book of the Week: Jules Verne’s 150,000 Kilometres Under The sea.

Yes? And your point is? (By the way Dickie, the top brass prefer “royal” – as in Royal Navy – capped up. Cufflinks rattling, old chap)

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Daily Express, March 26, 2010:

I had never heard of mephedrone before last week.

Hadn’t you, Julia? So, really, you’re not in a position to lecture us about it, are you? Oh no – you are, you are, you are . . .

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, March 26, 2010:

The class war is over. The Marxists won. After 13 years of Labour rule, Britain has been turned into a fully fledged socialist nation, governed by a vast, authoritarian state bureaucracy.

Blimey. I’ve just come back from a week in Marrakech (easyPeasyJet for next to nothing) and hadn’t realised the world had altered so much is such a short time. That’ll teach me not to dawdle in foreign countries. Or is one of us on another planet, Leo?

 

Frederick Forsyth on the general election, in the Daily Express, March 26, 2010:

Personally I suspect we may have a very low poll if regiments of traditional Labour voters simply say to themselves: “I can’t bring myself to vote for this bent rabble any more, nor the others, so I am going to mow the lawn.”

Quite so, Freddie. Those “regiments of traditional Labour voters” who do not possess lawns will probably opt for a day’s hunting instead.

 

Quentin Letts on a TV interview with Samantha Cameron, in the Daily Mail, March 15, 2010:

Mrs Cameron made it look effortless. Here was an unstuffy, street-cool, laid-back looker, glottal-stoppy and a martyr to minor rhotacism (the letter R eludes her).

Quent. Don’t use big words then explain their meaning. It’s embarrassing. And the thickos among us really do not appreciate it.

 

Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Daily Express, March 11, 2010:

We’re mired in bloody wars on two fronts . . .

Julia, I’ve been tossing this over in my mind for a long time. I can come up with only one. I’m going to look really silly if I’ve missed something.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, March 10, 2010:

There’s been a huge response to my column on Michael Foot. Some people think I owe Wurzel an apology. On Friday, I wrote that at least Footy wasn’t a paid-up agent of the Soviet Union. Now I learn that, according to former Russian spy Oleg Gordievsky, Foot was on the KGB payroll for 20 years. He also published pro-Soviet articles in Tribune in exchange for Moscow gold. Apologies for any embarrassment caused.

Let’s get this straight, Dickie. Parliamentarian respected by all parties for lifetime’s contribution to British politics, social change and world peace – Bad Man. Soviet agent who made a living out of deception before switching sides and betraying his own country – Good Man. Yes . . . And . . . ?

 

Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail, March 10, 2010:

Heckled by Labour meatheads while he was trying to question Gordon Brown about Army equipment levels, the Conservative leader reacted with instant, hurtling fury. He really let rip.

Gosh, I wish I’d seen that. Instant, hurtling fury. Must have been really something.

 

Jeremy Clarkson on legislation, in the Times, March 8, 2010:

Happily, however, I have a solution to the problem, a way that normal human behaviour can be preserved. It’s simple. We must start to accept that 5% of the population at any given time is bonkers.

Quite so. Inclined to agree with you. Raving bonkers.

 

Richard Littlejohn on the death of Michael Foot, in the Daily Mail, March 5, 2010:

It wasn’t so much the olive-green donkey jacket that men of my father’s generation objected to. It was the fact that the Labour leader laying the wreath at the Cenotaph sat out the Second World War and let others do his fighting for him.

Dickie! This is the perfect opportunity to tell us about how you refused to let others do your fighting in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan. Come on then . . . Haway . . .

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, March 4, 2010:

The Labour Government has been a disaster, ripping apart our economy with its extravagance, destroying our nationhood through mass immigration and multi-culturalism . . . What a relief it would be if the iron-willed spirit of (Fabio) Capello infused our public life, bringing back honour and dignity. The charlatans in the House of Commons, so cynically manipulating their expenses, would be thrown out as swiftly as John Terry.

Immigration and multi-culturalism bad; Italian footballer for Prime Minister good. Does this man get paid for writing mixed-up stuff like this?

 

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, March 1, 2010:

In many constituencies throughout the socialist heartlands of Scotland, the Midlands and the North, the majority of the electorate is dependent on the state.

This means those constituencies have at least a 50 per cent unemployment rate, Leo. New battery in the calculator, I think, old man. Still, good of you chaps in the South to keep us all afloat. Sterling job.

 

Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, February 27, 2010:

What I don’t grasp is why the people of this country put up with so many separate insults to their intelligence in any given week.

This is something I’ve pondered over too, Hitchy. I think the answer might be to stop reading the Daily Mail. Let’s give it a try.

 

Boris Johnson in the Telegraph, February 26, 2010:

If she had told me they were going to be wearing padded bras and cami‑knickers, I could not have been more astonished.

1,047 words on why the mayor of London insists on wearing a woolly hat and not a safety helmet while skiing. Reassuring to know his mind is on the job at all times.

 

Leo McKinstry, Daily Express, February 25, 2010:

The EU governs our borders, welfare system, defence and foreign policy and even jail sentences for criminals. It is pointless to pretend the process of constant urrender to Brussels can be halted while Britain remains an EU member.

Exactly, Leo. What you need is a catchy slogan. “No urrender” would be appropriate.

 

Peter Hitchens’ column headline, in the Daily Mail, February 22, 2010:

Another big push, another procession of coffins . . . another unwinnable war.

Good job you weren’t around for Dunkirk, Hitchy.

 

Frederick Forsyth on sovereignty and the European Union, in the Daily Express, February 19, 2010:

But oddly there is one country that could still pass a parliamentary vote to claw back her sovereignty. Us. The British. It would mean upsetting the Elysée midget and Missis Merkel.

Thank you for that worthwhile and illuminating demonstration of British diplomacy, tact and tolerance, Freddie. Back in your box, old boy.

  

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, on Argentinian skulduggery in the South Atlantic, February 19, 2010:

While this is hardly the Cuban missile crisis and no one is suggesting it could lead to a second Falkands war . . .

Actually, Dickie, half the British press has been suggesting just that for the past few days. Have you turned your back for five minutes again?

 

Frederick Forsyth, the Daily Express, February 15, 2010

As the wall-to-wall ­coverage of the horror in Haiti ebbed from the headlines, a thought occurred to me. When these nature-based disasters occur, whether volcano, forest fire, devastating floods tsunami or earthquake, is it the world, the global village, that rushes to help? Actually no, it is the constantly criticised and screamed-at West that drops ­everything, digs deep into the pockets of millions and tries to bring succour.

Fred, get a new telly. One that has colour so you can see the black faces, the yellow faces and red crescents.

 

Peter Mullen on wind turbines, in The Northern Echo, February 13, 2010:

These turbines are an eyesore, they create noise pollution and, according to many medical experts, can damage our health.

Eh? Damage our health? Stop smoking them.

 

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, February 12, 2010

Maybe I’m in a minority of one here, but I still don’t understand the fuss over Binyam Mohamed.

Correct. You are. And we’re not surprised.

  

Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail, February 2, 2010

The trouble with taking a week off is that you can’t turn your back for five minutes.

Ta. Now can you go away again?