Brains in the posterior position - by Richard... Sunday, November 20, 2011

Brains in the posterior position - by Richard... Sunday, November 20, 2011

When you think about it, it is a pretty bizarre idea, interviewing one of your employees and putting the result on the front page of the product which you insist – with decreasing conviction – on calling a newspaper. But then, when it comes to Boris Johnson, pretty bizarre rules seem to apply all right, including a belief in some quarters that this man is a serious politician with anything intelligent to offer.

By no measure, though, should anyone take seriously any article or statement – as with this one - which complains that a plan will "wreck democracy in EU". The concepts of democracy and the EU are so far apart that any idea of juxtaposing them is totally off the wall. Anyone who seeks to link them simply is not worth listening to.

Frankly, that applies in general to anything produced by Boris, including his latest nostrums for solving the eurozone crisis, which fail to recognise that the "colleagues" are reacting to the crisis politically, and are therefore not in the least minded to listen to a man who has a long history of shallow thought, and an appeal to the masses which is, frankly puzzling.

Here we have a nation that took Churchill to its heart (albeit getting rid of him in 1945), but which them embraces a man who, even on a good day, would struggle to qualify as a lightweight fool.

Part of the reason, of course, is to do with the essential triviality of the media, and its insistence on reducing serious issues to soap opera status. For the ineffably lightweight political journalists of today, the ineffably lightweight Boris Johnson is the perfect foil.

But there is also underlying this the lamentable failure within the political classes, but also the mindless Failygraph reader to think past the extruded verbal material (EVM) and think about what the man is actually saying.

For how many years have we all be complaining about the lack of democracy in the EU, to the extent that it is an anti-democratic organisation, on then to have this buffoon make his ludicrous comment about democracy? And the response, rather than universal scorn, has a goodly proportion of the readership braying "right on Boris!" or words to that effect.

One can only observe that, when in a political culture that embraces this refined stupidity, those that indulge in it get everything they deserve. The big, and almost insoluble problem, however, is that the rest of us do not deserve to have our politics dictated by those with their brains in the posterior position.

A Booker trio - by Richard...

Three stories from Booker this week, two in one tranche and another instalment of "stolen children" which gets its own separate slot.

For obvious reasons, I have had less to do with the making of these stories than normal, although Booker usually runs his own show on the "stolen children". Even though I fully support him in his endeavours, it isn't really my bag.

This week's tale, though, is a good one, harping back last month when the plods banged up a 14-year-old girl for "assaulting" four of their number, after they tried to take her into "protective custody" for the crime of being found at home with her mum.

Arresting the victim of police violence is a classic plod ploy, but in this case four plods against a 14-year-old looked a bit excessive even to the CPS and we learn that they have now abandoned the case.

The girl's lawyers are now considering bringing a case against the police and, as so often before, Booker raises the question as to why the plods seem so willing to intervene mob-handed to seize children on behalf of social workers, when too often there seems not the slightest call for such aggressive behaviour.

There must be a sensible answer to that, but it is one which has so far eluded us.

A question Booker does not ask, in respect of his global warming story, is why anyone still listens to or watches the BBC on this issue – or another other, for that matter. Instead, he goes into rather more detail than I would have cared to on quite how biased the Corporation is when dealing with the subject.

This, Booker goes into even more detail in a forthcoming pamphlet which, although in ursine excretory behaviour territory, does provide useful background on the Beeb status.

This then gives way to a classic Booker "red tape folly" story, with the added poignancy of being an EU tale, just at a time when The Boy is implausibly describing himself as a Euro "sceptic", making reference in his Guildhall to "pointless interference, rules and regulations" from Brussels.

Personally, I think Cameron should be prosecuted under the Trades Description Act, for passing himself off as a eurosceptic, although I guess we could just change the vocabulary. We could call ourselves "outers" and be done with it. That leaves Cameron looking fatuous, as he does here, in other sad tale of pointless interference that makes a lie of any pretence he might have to dealing with the burden of EU regulation.

Three vintage tales then … no answers, unfortunately, but I think we know those already.