Miscellaneous spleen

Proms not inclusive, says Hodge:

"The Proms attract too narrow a section of society, culture minister Margaret Hodge has suggested in a speech."

It seems to me perfectly natural that the Proms should attract a narrow section of society. I'd be worried if anything other than a narrow section of society didn't find the Proms to be a load of shite. Why have we got a Culture Secretary and why is it Margaret Hodge? She went on:

"But she acknowledged that culture could also be divisive - citing the examples of Jerry Springer: The Opera, which Christians said was blasphemous and Behtzi, a play which depicted sex abuse in a Sikh temple and was cancelled after protests."

But isn't culture intrinsically divisive? It divides those who like a given piece of culture from those who don't. I mean, I wouldn't be seen dead at Jerry Springer: the Opera - not out of any concerns about blasphemy but because Jerry Springer is shite so any opera about it is bound to be uber-shite. I went to the opera once. It was horrible. People laughing at the jokes in the opera as if they were the most hilarious lines they'd ever heard. Bunch of phonies - bet they couldn't even speak Italian. If they could speak Italian, they'd have known the jokes weren't that fucking funny. Still, at least Hodge isn't as big a walloper as David Cameron:

"Tory leader David Cameron said she did not "get it" and said the Proms were a "great symbol of our Britishness"."

So - Britishness has something to do with standing next to a bunch of yahoos waving Union flags and singing Land of Hope and Fucking Glory, is it? Jeez - some of us are unionists but this unutterable tosser of a man isn't exactly helping our case.

Then there's the government's 'Obesity Strategy'. Aren't you sick of hearing about this? It's annoying the shit out of me, and I'm not even fat. Some plank said it was a crisis on the scale of global warming or some such shite. I would have thought it obvious to any half-educated person that it's most unlike global warming. Global warming has to do - if I understand it - with the possibility we'll all melt because of the pollution being pumped into the atmosphere - except in Glasgow where - surprise, surprise - they predict that the effect of global warming will be that it rains more than it does already. Fucking typical. Anyway, the point being if someone deposits toxic green gloop into a river, this is a matter for everyone. Economists call these 'externalities', or something. Whereas if someone's overweight, this is really a matter for them, isn't it? And please don't give me any of this crap about the cost to the NHS. Where did people get this fucked-up idea that the short space we spend on this ball of dirt is to be spent worshiping other people's taxes, for fuck sake?

I'm particularly annoyed that the fat police are upsetting my comrade Peter Ryley. Do you read him? You really should. He writes stuff worth reading - whereas bloggers who get a kazillion hits a day just cut and paste some bullshit they read about Muslims in the Daily fucking Telegraph and invite about a billion comments from complete and utter fuckwits. How did that happen? But I digress... What upset this splendid gentleman was a piece in Comment is Wank from some deranged harpie that writes for Conservative Future (oxy-fucking-moron) where she argues that our nanny state simply isn't nannyish enough for her tastes. Gordy, for example, doesn't go far enough when he says:

"[T]hat people [should] "have access to the opportunities they want and information they need in order to make choices and exercise greater control over their health and their lives".

The thing is, like with our sex-lives, I'd have thought politicians are the last people who should be lecturing us about healthy living. There's not a few of them that don't look strangers to a few extra pounds to me. And Gordon Brown, while not fat, doesn't exactly look like the picture of health, does he? He's sort of stodgy and pallid as if he spends most of his time sitting on the sofa eating white bread with the curtains drawn.*

Ok, dunno about you lot but I feel better after that. See ya later...

This line stolen from here.