Merry Christmas Eric Pickles, you dimwit
Happy jolly Christmas time! Hurrah! Snow already! Joy unbounded. But wait... what's this...? Could it be...? Yes, it's it the so-called politically correct brigade and the diversity Nazis come to spoil our fun...? Aaargh! Who will stand up for traditional British Christian loveliness in the face of the Fun Police with their evil Winterval and Season's Greetings...?
Step forward, SuperPickles. With his trusty shield made out of a Quality Street tin lid and a sword of holly and mistletoe, SuperPickles will smite those nasty anti-Christianity scum! Yaaaaay!
"We should actively celebrate the Christian basis of Christmas, and not allow politically correct Grinches to marginalise Christianity and the importance of the birth of Christ.
"The War on Christmas is over, and likes of Winterval, Winter Lights and Luminous deserve to be in the dustbin of history.
SuperPickles! Fighter for truth and justice! SuperPickles! Crusader for Christianity! Putter of politically correct rubbish into the dustbin of history!
Except... you can't put things in the dustbin of history if they didn't really exist. Say it once, say it a million times, but Winterval wasn't a way of taking Christianity out of Christmas. Say it loud, say it long, say it dressed as a Christmas turkey with a giant Nativity scene stuffed up your jacksy; it doesn't matter. Faces like Pickles don't care. Just as with David Cameron's pandering to tabloid mythology over elf'n'safetygawnmad, it must've happened because, oh, something, so that's good enough! People are fighting a war on Christmas! We must stop them!
It's depressing. No-one's trying to ban Christmas, for fear of offending minorities, or anything like that. Must we go through this every single year? Oh, we must. 'Christmas is banned' is as much of a Christmas tradition as granny falling asleep in front of Where Eagles Dare after scoffing the Milk Tray, it seems. Oh well. Merry Christmas Eric Pickles, you dimwit. Goodwill to all men and all that, even if they are recycling tedious nonsense.
My fellow media blogger Kevin Arscott (of Angry Mob fame) is compiling a lengthy rebuttal to the annual Winterval drivel, so look out for that.
How dare people care about others
At a time when the only coverage of police issues revolves around angry confrontations with protesters, it's good to have a story about the cops showing their more caring community-based face, isn't it?
Well, it is, unless you're the Daily Express*. Cops trying to show respect for trans people is HOSTING POLITICALLY CORRECT CANDLELIT VIGILS FOR SEX SWAP CRIME VICTIMS. It really is PC gone mad, isn't it?!?!? And of course, some 'critics' are wheeled in to tut-tut at this reaching-out by the police:
But critics questioned whether sending police officers to the events was a wise use of resources in the face of looming budget cuts. Tory community safety spokesman Bill Aitken said: “Clearly, anyone who has been the victim of crime deserves to be remembered... I am surprised that the police had the time and resources at a weekend to carry out this service. Perhaps things are not as tight as they think.”
It's the classic 'public expenditure / PC gone mad' narrative: here are these diversity-loving bleeding hearts, wasting taxpayer cash on, ugh, being inclusive and stuff, when they could be, well, doing something else instead. But here's what is really unpleasant:
Richard Cook, of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, added: “The police need to remember that catching criminals is the reason people pay their taxes in the first place, not for them to hold vigils like this.”
Do you know what, Richard Cook, of the Campaign Against Political Correctness? You're wrong. Don't you dare tell me what I want my tax money spent on. This is what irks me most about the Tax Payers Alliance / Campaign Against Political Correctness astroturf rentaquotes: they presume to speak on everyone's behalf, and are taken as such by the journalists involved to try and create an angle. But where is the welcoming for this move by the trans community?
No, this isn't news, this is just one-sided pie-chucking. The paper says "Strathclyde Police statistics show that there have been no homophobic murders or attempted murders since officers started recording hate crimes", as if murders or attempted murders are the sum total of all hate crimes. It's wilfully bad journalism. So some police took some time out to go and try a bit of outreach? Good for them, and as a taxpayer I, for one, am very glad they're doing that. But then, no-one asks for my comment on these stories, because I'm not going to give the desired 'PC gone mad' quote.
* I'm not sure if this version is specific to the Scottish Daily Express or is there for everyone to enjoy.
PC gone mad gone mad
There was a time before so-called political correctness 'went mad'. Here's a taste of what that time was like.
Mm. Sometime between that, and now, PC 'went mad'. You couldn't even paint a golliwog in faeces on a black person's face without someone from the Diversity Nazis getting all uppity about someone's so-called human rights having been infringed. It was that bad.
And then, someone thought: Oh this is a bit of a laugh. Why not call a gingerbread man a 'gingerbread person' for a chuckle, to have a sly dig at PC gone mad? No-one's going to take it seriously, are they? I mean, it'll be so obviously a joke that no-one's going to get all het up about it, are they? Are they...?
Of course they are. And they did. We are in the post humour age. An MP, and a national newspaper (rather deliciously shredded by Five Chinese Crackers here) not only thought it was PC gone mad, but didn't bother to find out whether it was or not. One phone call.
"Hello, is this PC gone mad, these gingerbread people?"
"Oh, silly, that was a joke at PC gone mad, do you see?"
"Oh, I look a bit of a tit now, good job I checked before barking about this as if it was real."
"Yes, it is a good job you checked. Mind how you go!"
No. Now the council is changing the 'people' to 'men'. Because no-one in the fucking country can take a joke any more. We're all such literal buffoons that we don't get it. It's gone. You know that thing that Brits used to say about Americans not getting irony? That's gone. That's over. Finished. Done. Bye! It's gone forever. We are now in the age where 'PC gone mad' has gone mad. We are a laughing stock. Except we probably wouldn't get the joke.
Who’s leading the War on Christmas?
Today's Daily Mail roars its support for the Pope's somewhat bemusing "Christmas is banned by the PC Brigade" speech of yesterday:
That sounds like a great film, by the way. "He was a Pope... in a world gone atheist... and he's only got 48 hours to save Christmas...!" - I'd go to it, anyway.
So you'd think that the paper so delighted in Il Papa's war on the War on Christmas would be pleased when shops launched their Christmas displays early - after all, that's a way to stop those pesky atheists from wrecking our Christmas traditions, isn't it? Joyful Christmas stuff, all year round! No PC Brigade butting in with their anti-Christmas evil!
With 145 days to go and the sun shining, astonished shoppers gearing up for their summer holidays were met with extraordinary scenes at Selfridges yesterday where Christmas decorations went on sale - five months early.
The move will outrage millions of people who feel the festive season already comes far too early - let alone at the height of summer before many have even taken their holidays.
But surely that's a good thing? The Pope is battling to save Christmas, for God's sake! Why should we be annoyed by Christmas being celebrated early? Isn't that just a way of expressing our battle to stop those nasty secularist scum from wrecking our joyful commemoration of Jesus's birth? No...?
A Selfridges spokesman said in this July story:
'We also have luxury items. We're going to be selling a £500 life-sized donkey, which is very realistic and we think would be perfect for Nativity plays.
'I can see a time when we offer our Christmas collection throughout the year.'
But wait... are the Mail saying it's not a good thing to be selling things for Nativity plays, explicitly celebrating the birth of Jesus? Doesn't that sound a bit like the War on Christmas to you...?
Looks like Benedict XVI had better start with those anti-Christmas Scrooges at the Mail first, if he's going to save our Winterval.
Papal bullshit and Winterval bingo
Tabloid Watch has written a stellar post tying together all the "politically correct brigade want to ban Christmas for fear of upsetting someone or other" nonsense emanating from the Pope's silliness about wanting to protect Christmas. It seems that no matter how many times you point out that there was no anti-Christmas 'Winterval' celebration in Birmingham, people don't want to believe that; they want to believe that Christmas really was banned by the PC Brigade.
I don't know how the Pope managed to get such a strange view of Britain - a land of aggressively secular atheists grumbling about wanting to ban crucifixes and Christmas, who marginalise Christmas so much that it lasts from fucking August till January, who hate religion so much that the Pope's visit is all over every newspaper and broadcast live on TV, leading every single news bulletin. I can only imagine times were tight at the Vatican.
"Right, I'd better get some reading material to prepare me for my visit to Britain. I don't want to look like some out-of-touch, slightly sinister old duffer who doesn't really have a fucking clue about what's going on in the places where I go. Cardinal, bring me the finest newspapers from the United Kingdom!"
"But, your holiness, I know you're infallible and all that, but we've got to make cutbacks. Perhaps we could just buy one newspaper and do with that. How about we just look at one copy of the Daily Mail? That's meant to be quite good. I'm sure that'll be representative of what's going on in Britain and won't distort everything out of all recognition."
"Oh, all right. Kasper seems to like it. He keeps telling me about this man called Littlejohn I should make into a saint..."
We can argue about whether God exists or not, but it's hard to disprove something if it doesn't exist - which brings me to the PC Brigade. It's such a marvellous modern-day myth that you can see why even supposedly learned people like Ratzinger have been sucked in. For a lot of people, it presses all the right buttons. Here's this bunch of people secretly running the country, but never announcing themselves, a liberal elite who hate the traditional values that made this country great, who hate middle-class white heterosexual males specifically but everything decent and traditional in general, who force people to hide their faith and religion, force people to stop celebrating Christmas, force everyone into a Cromwell-style fun vacuum.
It's bollocks, of course, but it's an inviting myth. Of course the evidence doesn't prove it at all - already the shops are piling up with Christmas tat, and there'll be wall to wall Christmas this, that and the other by the end of September. (I happen to like Christmas, even though I'm not religious, so I'm kind of looking forward to it all.) People will be as free as ever to express their faith and no-one's going to stop them in the slightest, and that is how it should be.
But the odd anecdote will start to slip out. Some office somewhere couldn't put up decorations - for fear of upsetting Muslims! Someone was told they couldn't worship Jesus Christ by putting an 80ft inflatable Homer Simpson on top of their Mini Metro - because the evil PC Brigade want to stamp out Christianity! Someone says that there aren't enough Christmas decorations in some public sector building (at a time of cutbacks and looming redundancies, wonder why on earth they aren't splashing out on Yuletide jollity?) - because of the Winterval nutters! And so on, and so on. I don't know why, but I had kind of thought that the Pope might be more intelligent than to think these kind of things exist. Now he's gone and pandered to the PC Brigade bullshit, though, it's a green light for the tabloids to trot out the same old drivel, regardless of whether it's true or not.
Those "Christmas is banned" stories really do get earlier every year...
You say Halal, I say goodbye
(I'd already done Halal, is it meat you're looking for?)
There's a debate to be had about a secular institution like a state school providing food that conforms to certain religious standards. There's also a debate to be had about the animal welfare standards of halal (and kosher) food, and whether it inflicts undue suffering on the animals that are being slaughtered. But this story in yesterday's Daily Star isn't that debate:
Let's get the 'exclusive' out of the way first. This isn't a new thing. Halal-only meat in schools has been around for ages - I managed to find this story from 2006, and I'm sure there are plenty more from down the years. Actually if you compare that story
Halal meat is being served to pupils in state schools without their knowledge, even if they believe the religious slaughter is cruel.
Parents have reacted furiously after being sent letters telling them their children's school dinners have been all-halal for 'some time'.
To conform with Jewish and Muslim religious tradition, animals are prepared for halal products by having their throats slit while conscious - a method many people believe is inhumane and which the RSPCA has condemned.
with the Star's story of yesterday:
PARENTS are reacting with fury as children across Britain are served halal dinners even if they do not want them.
Schools are not offering youngsters any alternatives to the Islamic-prepared meat.
Fuming parents hit out after the Daily Star revealed plans to force halal-only lunch on children of all faiths in London borough Harrow, to avoid offending Muslims.
You can see the similarities. Parents reacting with anger/fury at the decision. All parents? Well I dare say some parents might be pleased that halal meat is being served in schools as the standard rather than an option; others might not be fussed either way; some might think that all animal slaughter is equally cruel, and not be bothered; others might give their children a vegetarian diet anyway, and so on. But the focus is on the ones who are shocked, annoyed, angry, and so on.
The main difference is the 'to avoid offending Muslims' bit of the Star story. It's a common phrase from 'PCgawnmad' stories wherever you might see them. Even Baroness Warsi, as we saw this week, had bought in to some of these myths. It's always 'to avoid offending Muslims', which was what the Mail said with its KFC Halal story back in March. I bet 'to avoid offending Muslims' has bugger all to do with it.
Actually it's a pretty good rule of thumb when reading the papers: when you see the phrase 'to avoid offending Muslims', you can be pretty sure that's not why something's been done. With KFC it was a matter of simple market forces; with these schools I imagine it's to do with there being such a significant proportion of pupils being from a Muslim background that it's more straightforward and cost-effective to offer halal-only meat.
But this isn't an argument about parents demanding RSPCA-certified freedom food in their children's school meals because of concerns about animal welfare. No. It's about 'BRIT KIDS' being 'FORCED' to eat 'MUSLIM MEALS'. You could make the point, and I wouldn't entirely disagree, that it's almost as if the Star are suggesting that children from a Muslim family are not 'Brits'. It's not as if the Daily Star and their stablemates the Daily Express have been shy about doing that before:
It's all about 'us' and 'them'. I think the image that's meant to be conjured up with the latest story is of some bearded fanatic forcing a chicken dinner down a poor seven-year-old's throat from an animal that was possibly slightly more unpleasantly treated than most other factory-farmed meat.
The thing I find interesting is the idea of 'offence'. As I've said earlier, the idea of 'to avoid offending Muslims' isn't quite the right way of putting it. But then again, if non-Muslims are a minority in an area with a large Muslim population, do they then become the 'offended' minority who should be catered for? Are people offended by a chicken that's bled out from a knife wound, for example? Or are people just offended that the majority's needs or wants should trample all over their freedom to eat what they want? Which makes you wonder: would the offended minority be such a concern for our newspapers if they were Muslims, as opposed to non-Muslims?
It's an interesting situation, and like I said at the beginning of this, there's a debate to be had about secularism, education, religion and so on, as well as the animal welfare aspects. It's just that our newspapers choose not to have that debate. They choose to have the one in which PCgawnmad Britain bends over backwards to those pesky Muslims.
PS You'll be pleased to hear that this story has already been picked up by our friends in the ultra-nationalist and anti-Muslim community and used as an example of why there's a 'jihad' against the 'indigenous' population. Well done, Daily Star!
PPS See Tabloid Watch's post.
England shirt / Polish bus driver tale update
Regular readers will recall the tale of a mum who had claimed her son was ordered off a bus, apparently by a 'Polish or East European' driver, because he was wearing an 'offensive' England shirt. It was a local news story which went straight into the eager mitts of the national papers, including the Mail, chiming as it did with an existing mythology about patriotic England imagery supposedly being banned by the PC Brigade. This story had the bonus of apparently involving an immigrant as well, so it was a real win-win.
The bus company concerned released a statement casting doubt on the story a little while ago. Now they have decided there is no truth in the allegations. To be fair to the (Daily Mail-owned, but let's not hold that against them) local paper which carried the original story, they have prominently covered the follow-up here:
A MOTHER who claimed her two-year-old was ordered off a bus for wearing an England shirt has been branded a liar.
Sam Fardon, of Trent Vale, had claimed an Eastern European driver for First Bus had described her son Dylan Hall's shirt as "offensive" when they tried to board the 34A service from Newcastle Bus Station to Chesterton.
The 27-year-old said it was only when other passengers intervened that she was allowed on the vehicle.
But a First investigation has found nothing to back up her claims.
Not only that, though - and you can read the lengths to which the company went to in order to see if the claims were true - but here is the really crucial detail, in my opinion:
Miss Fardon has now withdrawn her complaint. She said today: "I have continued to use the buses."
The complaint has been withdrawn. Case closed.
If you pop over to the Mail website, you can still find the original story, though:
We now know that headline to be almost certainly false - perhaps a bit of checking could have saved an awful lot of blushes all round. Fair play to the local paper for doing the decent thing and reporting on the new information now that it's come to light, but you have to wonder whether the story sounded so good, and chimed in so nicely with existing mythology, that it couldn't be turned down by the likes of the Mail - whether there was any substance in it or not, or rather, regardless of whether there was any substance in it or not.
What I hope, by the way, is that this doesn't get twisted into being an attack on the woman in question, as I don't really go in for that kind of thing at all. People make mistakes and do daft things. It's finished now, and as long as the new information that's come to light is reported as prominently as the original tale, then there's no need for recriminations.
But how many people will find out about this new information? And how many will still think there's some truth to the 'foreign bus driver kicked the toddler off the bus' tale, because it's what they want to hear? Can we really do anything about it, trying to boost the profile of the competing information? Who knows. I hope we can.
Starting to flag a bit
Look, it's an England flag. Look at it! It's the kind of tacky plastic novelty you'll see on cars up and down the country ahead of the World Cup, fluttering in the breeze or, most likely, littering the side of the motorway in ever growing numbers as the tournament progresses and England spiral towards their inevitable being-knocked-out-on-penalties-despite-a-brave-performance-in-which-they-get-outpassed-and-resort-t0-launching-high-ball-after-high-ball-up-at-Crouch-in-a-vain-bid-to-bundle-in-an-equaliser.
Hooray! The cross of St George flutters proudly at the top of this blog, despite the diversity Nazis and successive visits from the PC Brigade. It hasn't been banned from this blog because health and safety nuts have decreed that it would cost too much to put it on top of the page. It hasn't been banned because secretly I hate my own country because I'm a liberal fascist who loves Muslims and wants Britain to be a caliphate. It hasn't been banned for any of these reasons, because it's here, on my page, to celebrate the love I have for those brave 23 souls who may, or most likely may not (but I still harbour the hope they may) lift that golden trophy on a Sunday in July.
Yes, there are no bans at the Enemies of Reason! I'm not afraid that it might upset immigrants, or that my blog is such an international brand that it could stop overseas visitors from being delighted by the content. I'm not afraid that it could upset a Muslim. I'm not afraid of any of these things. Why not? Because I'm not a fucking moron.
There I go again, being sanctimonious. We liberal-left types aren't meant to call morons morons when they're being moronic; we're meant to imagine that if people are wilfully ignorant, or don't want to find out about things, or lack the curiosity to challenge what they've been told, that it's somehow our fault, and we should reach out to them, even though they won't believe us, for fear of alienating them. Do you know what? I try to bend over backwards as much as I can bear to, but fuck that.
Often, the reason why people are accused of being racist for what they say about the non-existent England flag/shirt/badger (oh yes! Our very patriotic fucking badgers are apparently under threat from the anti-England killjoy Gestapo!) is that they're racist. Often, the reason people are accused of being xenophobic is because they're xenophobic. Sometimes things just are what they are, and we needn't hand-wring our way into giving these fucking poisonous yo-yos an escape hatch.
Fuck that. I've read an awful lot of drivel about these supposed bans, often spilling into downright hatred of minorities; why shouldn't that be called out as what it is? Is that sanctimonious? Is that somehow wrong? Should I celebrate the diversity of a country that includes racism? Shall I mollycoddle the minority that is racist fuck-knuckles? No, I fucking won't. I've had enough of this shit.
Yes, if you go digging for long enough you can probably find examples of a couple of isolated times that well-meaning or dimwitted cops have genuinely told people to take down England flags, or someone has been told that a St George cross might offend someone, and so on. But as I said the other day with regards to immigration figures and their reporting in 'See what you want to see', that's not the whole picture.
Are these incidents, so rare that only a handful of examples can be verified despite a desperate search for them and despite numerous unverifiable tales which are described as being definitely true despite the lack of evidence, put into the context of huge numbers of cops - the vast majority - not telling people to take down flags? Are they put into the context of huge numbers of people - the vast majority - not telling their fellow citizens to stop wearing shirts, or not telling people they can't paint Big Ben red and white, and so on? Or are they depicted as being evidence of some kind of sinister trend, a clampdown on national pride? If it's the latter, then that is patent nonsense, and false, and misleading, and panders to idiots, and creates tension where there is none.
Here's the thing. No-one is offended by the England flag at the top of this page. No-one. People might think your car looks a bit shit if you plaster it with a billion flags, but that's because it probably does look a bit shit. Some people might be well-meaning or thick and think flags might offend people, but they're wrong, and they're completely and utterly in the minority, because they're wrong, and because most people understand that there's nothing wrong with a shirt or a flag. There is no clampdown, because it's just not happening. This complete bollocks gets recycled every time there's a tournament, and it gets repeated by lazy and fuckwitted journalists, not just because they're pressed for time, but also because some of them couldn't give a fuck whether it's right or not.
There is no big scary liberal PC Brigade health and safety diversity Nazis killjoy jobsworth conspiracy to stop anyone in England from enjoying the World Cup - I think you'll find the England team can manage that perfectly well on their own.
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