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NinjaMarmoset

~ rants & reflections of Martin Jameson, writer, director & grizzled media gunslinger.

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Category Archives: Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday’s Cold Mash

13 Saturday Mar 2021

Posted by Martin Jameson in BBC, Comedy, Conspiracy Theories, Media, Political Satire, Satire, Social Media

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Tags

Canine Political Rimming, Mash Report, Rachel Parris

When The Mash Report started I was really excited, hopeful for a razor sharp, banging new satire show. But I gave up after two programmes… partly because, as my wife said: ‘This isn’t nearly as funny as it thinks it is’. We’d stumble across it occasionally after that, and she would say: ‘This still isn’t as funny as it thinks it is.’ Before making me switch over.

Having said that, some of the Rachel Parris one-off pieces were very funny indeed and it was also at its most interesting and challenging with some of the Geoff Norcot exchanges. So I felt fine not enduring the whole thing live, just waiting for the occasional good bits (mainly Rachel Parris) to pop up as viral clips on FB or Twitter. But overall it had an alienating self-righteous smugness about it which had me reaching for the remote.

Give Rachel Parris her own show, someone? One where she isn’t in a 6:2 minority perhaps?

Satire at its best is surprising, exciting, dangerous and, most of all, challenging. Satire that assumes you agree with it – even if you do, especially if you do – is irksome and self satisfied. The Mash Report was, disappointingly, too often the latter.

Sooo…. is its axing a sign of right wing censorship at the BBC because Director General, Tim Davie, apparently, has his tongue glued to Boris’s backside and his aunt’s cousin’s poodle once shagged the Shitzu belonging to a Tory donor’s cleaner? The Daily Telegraph seemed to think so (but since when did I believe everything I read in The Daily Telegraph?) and so did lots of social media commentators running around like headless chickens waving their hands in the air and shouting THE NAZIS ARE COMING!!!

Fact is, I have no idea. If it was axed for political reasons then that is greatly concerning, but I haven’t seen any proof of that as yet beyond conjecture, supposition, paranoia etc. But if the Nazis are coming and it is a right wing putsch at the BBC, it’s even more concerning – because it should have been axed for not being good enough. (That’s satire, by the way).

A show doesn’t have a right to air time because I broadly agree with its political standpoint.

Either way, I’m struggling to mourn its passing because I’m hoping for something better. And as the late, great Peter Cook once observed, the comedy of Beyond the Fringe was heavily influenced by the German Cabaret of the 1930s that did so much to stop the rise of Hitler.

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The Marmoset’s Bottom Ten 2017 Desperate Election Clichés

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by Martin Jameson in Conspiracy Theories, Economics, Facebook, General Election 2017, Jeremy Corbyn, Journalism, Labour Leadership, Labour Party, Main Stream Media, Media, Political Satire, Politics, Satire, Social Media, Theresa May, Twitter

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Electoral Turnout, Laura Kuenssberg, Media Blaming, Opinion Polls

Last summer, in the heat of Owen Smith’s challenge to Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the UK Labour Party, this particular Marmoset pissed off a lot of people, blogging about the Bottom Ten Lazy Political Generalisations propagated by the moon-eyed/swivel-eyed (delete where not applicable) acolytes of Mr Jez-We-Can, who wander the echoing labyrinth of Social Media, their faces periodically melting like Indiana Jones Nazis whenever said Echo dares to mutter: ‘Actually, perhaps he can’t’.

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BTW When I say ‘heat’ I’m referring more to the foetid steam that rises from microwaved three-week-old leftover rice pudding.  It has the capacity to scald but it smells like sour baby poop.

Oh, by the way, if you’re hoping for a measured commentary on the lefty social media chaterati response to General Election 2017, then you’ve come to the wrong place. I warn you now, there will be swearing.

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The Marmoset is NOT IN  A GOOD MOOD.

The more emollient voices chided me: ‘But surely, Jeremy’s tenure as leader is precipitating a debate we should have had years ago.’ Ehm, hello?? I think we did actually have this debate, certainly in the 1980s and quite possibly a good few decades before that as well. The answer was as clear then – as it is horribly clear now. Remember this guy?

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Well he was wrong about that as well. History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as an even worse fucking tragedy – except this time the Marmoset is 57 years old and doesn’t know if he’ll live to see the left of British politics recover.

But… I hold my hands up. I was wrong. Just like Karl.
Yes.
I’ve said it.
The Marmoset was 100% wrong.
I repeatedly intimated in my August 2016 blog that certain political tropes on social media were intellectually lazy. What a load of utter bollox. No! Here we are, two years after the train wreck of the 2015 General Election; two awful Labour Leadership elections; not to mention the EU Referendum, and the same people are churning out the same clichéd, simplistic, reductive, un-evidenced nonsense they spouted throughout all those sickeningly ill-fated campaigns.

This amount of wilful self delusion isn’t lazy – it’s bloody hard work.

Recently, for the sake of my blood pressure (and everybody else’s patience), I disconnected myself from FB because, far from learning a single thing from recent debacles, the quality of popular dialogue on the left of Social Media appears to be sinking to new lows. But if Tweeters and FBers insist on inventing new tiresome political clichés/excuses/expressions of moral and political outrage, then I reserve the right to fashion another ‘Bottom Ten’.

I won’t bother with the whole Alan Freeman ‘pop-pickers’ thing.

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‘Not ‘alf!’

Well… ok, just to get us going: ‘Coming in at number ten!’

10) ‘The real reason Theresa May called this election is…’

I’ve seen a few bizarre reasons touted, but the main one is that it supposedly puts to bed accusations of Tory electoral fraud at the 2015 General Election – a story championed by Michael Crick at C4 News. Ehmmm… How does that work exactly? Any electoral fraud charges won’t just go away because an election is called. Even if every suspected MP stands down at this election – and I don’t believe that they are, certainly not at the time of writing – then issue remains very much live and will re-emerge if the CPS decided to press charges. (NB. Since writing this blog, events have moved on and the CPS have decided not to press charges in all but one constituency, South Thanet, where a decision remains to be made – but my point very much still stands.)

I’ve also seen posts suggesting that Theresa May’s real reason for going to the country is something vaguely to do with Philip May making loads of cash (no, I don’t understand that either) – or, that other golden oldie, to cover up accusations of a paedophile ring at the heart of the establishment. Wha…? Regular visitors to the Marmoset may remember what this dubious little monkey had to say about conspiracy theories.

This election is about her control of Brexit and maximising the Tory majority at a time when the opposition is at its weakest thanks to the poor and unpopular stewardship of Jeremy Corbyn. No more, no less.

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9) ‘You can’t trust the Polls!  Look what happened in 2015, Brexit, Trump etc….’

Polling gets a lot of stuff wrong, because while it’s a science from which we demand exactitude, the parameters are constantly shifting, and it’s a challenge for the methodology to keep up. But statisticians are generally smart cookies and able to learn from their mistakes, so before we start bleating about how we can ignore the polls, it’s worth a click or two (if you can be arsed before proclaiming) to check the facts. Let’s look at the oft cited straws at which poll-deniers are wont to grasp:

The 2015 General Election: There were 92 polls during the campaign, 17 of which were dead heats. In 42 of the remainder Labour had a small lead, and in the other 33 the Conservatives led, sometimes by as much as 6%. The Tories won with a 7% lead. So the clues were there for anyone who wanted to find them, and the inaccuracy, such as it was, concealed a far greater advantage for the Conservative Party. Something very similar happened in 1992 when, despite only garnering a small parliamentary majority, John Major defied Labour-favouring polls by scoring the highest popular vote of any Prime Minister in UK electoral history.

The EU Referendum:  These polls were a bit more accurate as a whole, with quite a few anticipating the result closely… and where they were wrong, favouring the Remain side –  yes, you guessed it – they hid an actual bias towards the less liberally inclined Leave voter.

The 2016 US Election: The polls were derided for not predicting Trump’s historic (!) victory, but Clinton won the popular vote by nearly three million votes, so they were hardly out of the ball park.

And what do all these have in common? The polling critically over estimates the level of Labour/Left support. There are some voices suggesting that polling companies are trying to factor in this left leaning bias from previous surveys, and have overcooked their compensatory mechanisms. The local elections with an 11% Tory lead as opposed to the 18% predicted in national polls might give this weight, but then again, voting patterns in local contests are different from those in general elections, so frankly, who knows. What we do know is that a polling error that would wipe out a consistent 18% lead has no historical precedent.

‘Ah yes!’ Exclaim the Moon-Swivellers, ‘but Jeremy defied 200/1 odds to become Labour Leader in the first place!!!’ Hmmm… that’ll be with a self nominating electorate, many of whom paid three quid for the privilege. It doesn’t count. It really, really doesn’t count.

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The Only Poll That Counts… …and it’s usually more conservative than the pretend ones.

8) ‘The Main Stream Media is biased against Him!!! ‘
(That’ll be ‘Him’ with a capital ‘H’ – I mean, He deserves one, surely)

Oh god, I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO bored of this one… and anyone who’s dabbled with the Marmoset will know I’ve jabbered on about it at some length before.

But sadly – tediously! – it seems that the point can’t be made too often. Aside from whether there’s anything like the bias that the Facebook-erati claim (there is and there isn’t, that’s for another day) – or whether bias either way is ’cause’ or ‘effect’ – the tiresome bit is the endless tinnitus whine of the complaint itself.

If you, Dear Reader, are inclined to media-blaming, convinced that potential Labour voters are swayed from their true course by the establishment, Oxbridge cabal at the BBC; or the mere existence of Murdoch sponsored front pages in newsagents; or Krishnan Guru-Murthy with his devastating page one questions for Jeremy Corbyn on Channel 4 News; or The Daily Mail which, for some reason, these potential Labour voters are already reading (yeah… go figure that one…); or… or…. or…. (cough, splutter, aneurysm) …LAURA KUENSSBERG (‘Burn the witch!! Burn the witch!!!!!)…

…if you are one of these people whinging and moaning and mewling and puking about media bias, what you are actually saying is: ‘I’m really smart!! I’m intellectual, me. I know THE TRUTH. But out there are lots of STUPID people who will sway with the wind like moronic sheep – unlike ME, far cleverer than the dimwit lumpen masses who are incapable of independent thought, but, annoyingly, on whom Labour victory depends!!

Sorry… was I ranting. Breathe.

A common trope on FB and Twitter is to berate the BBC for giving too much air time to Nigel Farage and UKIP. Let’s ignore the four million license fee payers who voted UKIP at the last election and concede that perhaps there is some weight to this criticism. What just happened at the recent May local elections? Wipeout for UKIP. And it looks very much as if June will see them swept from the arena once and for all, despite all that media coverage.

Why? Because people aren’t stupid. They are capable of independent thought, and the former UKIP voter has made the quite rational judgement that their time is gone, and that Paul Nuttall is even more ridiculous than Nigel Farage.

It’s a shame really, because right now anyone seriously wanting Labour victory could do with an electorate divided along UKIP lines… perhaps if you still have media-blaming proclivities you could write to the BBC and ask for a bit more UKIP propaganda to help shore up some Labour marginals!

Why oh why

Oh yeah, and while we’re at it… The Main Stream Media? What are you actually talking about? Newspapers with their ever declining circulations? Or would that be Social Media, Facebook, Twitter – used by billions of people – where people talk bollocks to their mates who already agree with them or read lengthy blogs written by self-opinionated gits tapping away in their attics…

Oh… hang on…

7) ‘If only people would get out and vote, we could swing this election!!’

When His Corbyness first caressed the wipe-clean leatherette arm-rests of his Labour throne, he countered those who dared suggest that he needed to woo the centre ground – or that polling indicated a somewhat oceanic lack of popular support – by boldly asserting there was an army of non-voters – The Disenfranchised, The Young Pee-Pul – who he would galavanise into registering, and who would propel him into 10 Downing Street at the head of a revolutionary tsunami.

Two years later, the tsunami is looking a tad like the wash from a drifting pedalo, and while no one, not even the Marmoset at his most curmudgeonly, would refute the importance of getting people to exercise their hard-won democratic rights…

…swinging from this particular twig, licking on my favourite rainforest exudate (look it up), I notice the bark is starting to splinter, and I offer this word of warning to anyone blaming Labour’s woes on low turnout – and seeking salvation by rousing the apathetic masses into the polling booth.

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Yum! I love a tasty exudate!

The inconvenient truth is that there’s no particular evidence to suppose that those who don’t vote are necessarily Labour supporters. Indeed, post war history implies the opposite. The turnout for the EU referendum – 72% – was unusually high compared to recent General Elections – between 7% and 12% higher than the last four elections. 2001 (59%) and 2005 (61%) had low turnouts – both Labour victories… 2010 (65%) and 2015 (66%), the turnout went up, and it favoured the conservatives. 1992 when John Major  was helped by a near record turnout of 77%.

Screen Shot 2017-05-09 at 15.59.53

When Blair defeated Major five years later it was on a turnout down by 6%. 
Other record turnouts include 1950 when Clement Attlee’s legendary, landmark government was ousted by Winston Churchill on an 84% turnout. Attlee’s victory was on a turnout twelve points lower.
 And my understanding from everything I’ve read about it, is that the higher turnout at the EU referendum favoured Vote Leave. So when we shout to the Social Media heavens for a greater turnout on June 8th, the phrase ‘be careful what you wish for’ comes to mind.

But given that people who don’t vote, er… don’t vote, then of course, this is, by definition, unknowable. If we accept that as true, I tentatively suggest that making the disenfranchised a core part of one’s campaign might be just a little fruitless. Even assuming we want to improve things for the disenfranchised (I know I do!) it’s still a better use of energy and resources to target one’s efforts at the people who actually go to polling booths, and who might be persuaded to chisel their cross in your particular box. Duh.

What we do with power when we get it is one thing – but an election is about winning votes. To flip Mario Cuomo on his head, if Labour want to win, we need to campaign in prose in order to have the slightest hope of governing in poetry.

quote-you-campaign-in-poetry-you-govern-in-prose-mario-cuomo-6-92-62

See what I did here?

So let’s sum up a bit. The cumulative effect of turnout blaming and media blaming  is that Labour’s path to victory is now reliant on a lumpen mass of weak-minded, easily brainwashed Murdoch/Mail reading dimwits incapable of independent thought who are additionally incapable of getting themselves to a polling booth.
Patronising and insulting to the electorate?
Most definitely.
True?
Thankfully not.
But until we change our attitude about this and concentrate on the non-tribal voting demographic whose allegiances we need to win, then victory will continue to elude us.

6) (Wrings hands) ‘But it’s all bloody personality politics – it should be about the policies!’

Oh FFS.  Of course it’s about personality! And character. Representative party democracy or not – a general election is about electing a Prime Minister. It’s a job interview, and the public will make their own choice about who they think is up to the task. They will use their gut and their life experience to decide this.

They will put competency very high on their list, and vote for someone they may not even like that much if they think they’ll get the job done. Of course policy is important – double duh! – but they’re trusting their lives, their children’s lives, their money, their jobs, their future to the stewardship of the nation’s ultimate line manager. And when was the last time you thought ‘the personal qualities of my line manager is of no consequence to me whatsoever’?

Who do you want driving the car, your lovely but dozy uncle who’s always scraping the verge, turning round to tell you stories of victories past, or your charmless tight-fisted aunt whose eyes never leave the road? You wouldn’t invite her to a party, but you want her wheel. Getting there alive is better than never getting there at all. In the case of May versus Corbyn, Theresa looks like she knows what she’s doing. Jeremy doesn’t.

Uh-uh! Don’t go off on one. I’m not saying that Theresa does know what she’s doing, but I am saying that if you sit, empathetically, in the swing-voter’s back seat then it is easy to see why she would be perceived that way.  Which brings me neatly to….

5) ‘But Theresa May… she’s a bloody robot!’

Oh yes, in electioneering terms, absolutely. This GE is being sung from the Lynton Crosby playbook turned up to eleven – and it’s certainly an eyeball peeling, eardrum shattering sensory assault. This may be hard for some guests of the Marmoset to stomach but David Cameron used to croon the Crosby tunes with a good deal of charm.

No, not him…

Bingcbs

This guy.

Lynton-Crosby-009

Sorry, you’re going to have to stick with the idea of David Cameron having charm. Remember, winning this election (if that were possible) is about persuading people who found Cameron to be charming – or Nigel Farage to be credible – that they’d rather vote for Jeremy Corbyn this time round. Try to stay focused on that idea.

Now excuse me while I jump back a metaphor. Think of the Lynton Crosby election-winning mechanism as a relentless, piston-thumping engine… In Cameron’s charming kid-driving-glove mitts, it is encased in a shiny chassis, shimmering in the sun as it flashes through a grove of poplars, shock absorbers and silencers rendering its pumping cylinders quiet as a whisper.

Sadly this time round, the charmless aunt has been handed the brutalist stripped down model. Lynton only has a few weeks, so there’s no chassis, no shock absorbers, no silencers… this is a V8 Crosby machine in the grinding raw.

IMG_0060

Theresa May’s oily election machine

Yup. We can see all the working parts. But the point is – the parts are working – the engine driving the May Robot is just as powerful, no matter how much we can smell the oil steaming off the cylinder block.

May’s team know what the selling point is – they’ve done the focus groups… (oooh… did I hear you sneer just then? Behave.) …and consequently they know what their target demographic thinks. Recent polling shows that concern about the outcome of Brexit exceeds concern for the future of the NHS in some surveys. It’s startling, but not surprising. It’s completely rational to be absolutely bloody terrified. I am! If Brexit goes tits up then everything else is fucked. Not only that, but huge swathes of the population – left, right, leave, remain – quite rationally understand that many in the EU are determined to prove that there can be no happy ending for anyone else with ideas about making a run for it.

So there’s one message: May’s a ‘bloody difficult woman’ who’ll fight the UK corner. Strong and stable and all that – and mock though we relentlessly do – May held down the scalp-strewn post of Home Secretary for six years, one of the longest tenures in recent history.

But she just keeps on saying it… because she and Lynton understand that if you’re a non-tribal voter and you care about the economy, you’ll vote for the person who you think can handle Brexit; if you care about immigration, you’ll vote for the person you think can handle Brexit; and if you care about the NHS you’ll vote for the person who you think can handle Brexit.

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Feast your eyes on this Survation Poll from Saturday May 6th 2017

Suddenly, because of Brexit, the Tories have the upper hand on healthcare. Yeah, I know, it turns the stomach and it’s sacrilege to write such words on a left-of-centre website, it’s barely possible to accept, but accept it we must, for it is true.

No… I can feel you REFUSING to believe me.  Look at that poll again – go on, do it!! – and rest assured it won’t be the last to send the same message.

But, you cry, Andrew Marr asked her a dozen questions and she didn’t answer a single one – it was just ‘strong and stable’, ‘strong and stable’ all the way. Duh again! Her refusal to engage with anything else just goes to prove the point. She’s so strong and stable she won’t be drawn on anything and just sticks to her core message. It’s a win-win, almost post-modern, strategy.

Now for a personal window into the domestic life of this Ninja monkey. Mrs Marmoset is worried about me because I keep saying admiring things about Theresa May, but my admiration is the same as one might have for the Alien. Being able to bleed acid blood through five decks of the Nostromo is pretty damned impressive….

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…and you need more than guns if you’re going to bring one of those mothers down.

Which segues nicely into…

4) ‘Well I’m voting for Jeremy because he is the only politician who has integrity, is truly genuine, is a proper socialist, represents true Labour values etc etc etc etc etc etc….’

If you must, but is that seriously the best reason you have?

Ah, I hear you say, with a smug flare of the nostrils, a keen narrowing of the eyes, a minute ago you said that personality was important. Yeah, smartarse, I did. But values on their own, ideals on their own, integrity (aka a bull-headed adherence to one point of view for the whole of your life) and a Santa list of sub-polytechnic-politics-subsidiary slogans does not a personality make. As for ‘genuine’ – what the Johnny-Cash does ‘genuine’ mean anyway? People thought Johnny Cash was genuine when he sang about prison life, but Cash never spent more than a night in the slammer for petty misdemeanours.

The very intelligent exlectorate rightly evaluate personality as Life Experience, Work Experience, The Ability To Get Things Done, and crucially for a Prime Minister, Leadership Skills (that’ll be leadership as in not having everyone in sight resign around you). Any idiot can have ideals – most of us have fabulous values and principles – but it takes real character to make them happen. Thirty-three years on the back benches, voting against your own side, and organising protest rallies hardly counts.

This is why people posting admiringly about Corbyn soldiering on after his front bench resigned and the near unanimous vote of no confidence are wrong – and this is why any other party leader would have resigned at that point. You can’t go into an election once your colleagues have told the rest of the country that you’re crap. You can’t go into an election with a front bench team made up of a talentless rump whose only qualification for office isn’t skill or experience, but that they were the only ones who didn’t vote you down. It’s not even a matter of whether the others were right to resign in the first place. It’s just a cold reality that there’s no way back from that. You’re stuffed – like a pig at a Bullingdon initiation party – and it’s a great oinking signal that you need to exit stage left and let someone lead the party who can command the confidence of a strong team.

That’s my idea of integrity.
And humility.
And personal strength.
And genuinely caring about the values of the Labour Party.

Ploughing on regardless is arrogant, stupid and selfish.

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Jeremy Corbyn – about as genuine as Johnny Cash

3) ‘If you don’t vote for Jeremy then it’s a vote to close the NHS, kill people on benefits, blah blah blah…’

After the local and mayoral elections on May 4th this sort of post was all over social media like Donald Trump’s hands in a cattery…. (….think about it).

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Or this…

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Although this kind of nonsense has already been brilliantly satirised in a painfully true spoof for The Independent – click here – there is more to be said.

The long term consequence of a landslide Tory victory may well be some, if not all, of these terrible things listed in those posts. Of that I have little doubt. However the short term consequence of so characterising any who might disagree with those who like to call themselves the progressive left is not one extra vote for the Labour cause.

Why? Because it’s lazy, reductive, patronising, arrogant, smug and wilfully obstructive to the reality of how elections are won… the last of which I reckon is pretty important if you really want to see a Labour government any time soon.

It starts from a nauseating moral high handedness, the assumption that only a Labour voter truly inhabits the moral high ground. So when wonderfully skilled ex-Coronation Street actors proclaim, sonorous and heartfelt, about Labour being the party that ‘gives a toss’, they have no idea how alienating that is to millions of people. What are they saying? That because someone votes Tory they don’t care about people?

If Labour are ever to win power again we need the votes of millions of folk who have voted Conservative in the past – and you’ve just told them they are moral scum.

This stuff is underpinned by the assumption that any right thinking person will automatically see the notion of Conservatism as toxic. Well, hold the front page. They don’t. They don’t automatically see being conservative as this…

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…and even if they do, they don’t necessarily experience a spasm of involuntary revulsion.  For millions of people around the country being a conservative voter looks just like this:

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It could just as easily be a still from a Ken Loach movie

If we are to win people over – to persuade, to cajole – then we have to banish this morally superior stereotyping to the self righteous trash can of losing strategies where it belongs.

Jeremy Corbyn has even managed to fuck up that sure-fire winner of a slogan: ‘For The Many Not The Few’. Over in Toryland, Theresa May speaks daily (and don’t we know it?) about negotiating a Brexit that works for everybody. She uses the word advisedly.  Everybody.
Everybody.
Now, while you or I may well doubt her sincerity, like it or not, the word ‘everybody’ means just that, and crucially excludes nobody.

Back in Corbynopolis, Our Jezzer has taken a phrase – For The Many, Not The Few – and made it sound hostile and exclusive. In his campaign launch on 9th May, he talked about:

‘…a reckoning for those who thought they could get away with asset stripping our industry, crashing our economy through their greed and ripping off workers and consumers’

It sounds like a declaration of war. It’s an expression of hate. I know many people who would look at me and say: ‘And your problem with that is…?’

While most people want to see a reduction in inequality, they are also aspirational. This kind of oratory is all about ‘us’ and ‘them’ – it reads as aggressive and divisive, and there are plenty of ordinary people wondering whether they might become a bit too ‘them’ to prosper in a Corbyn led society. Of course a Labour government will be founded on redistributive economics, but it needs to be framed in language as inclusive as that used by Theresa May.
Theresa May??? Inclusive????
I can feel the reader balking at everything I write – sputtering in disbelief – but listen, really listen to the difference in the language used. At a recent election appearance in Tynemouth, deep in traditional Labour territory, Theresa May addressed the gathering thus:

‘We respect that parents and grandparents taught their children and grandchildren that Labour was a party that shared their values and stood up for their community. But across the country today, traditional Labour supporters are increasingly looking at what Jeremy Corbyn believes in and are appalled.’

The Tories attack Corbyn personally – hammering away at his personal politics, competence and leadership skills – but you’ll never hear them deriding Labour voters themselves for their values. You’ll never hear them proclaiming that if you’ve voted Labour in the past you’re morally bankrupt and killing disabled people.
Why not?
Because they want our votes.

The language is carefully constructed to LOVE the Labour voter, while driving a wedge between them and their vulnerable leader.  Is it really beyond the wit of the Labour Party and its supporters to something similar and talk respectfully to people who are potential Tory voters but whom they want to persuade? Do we really have to talk like bullies?

And if you still think I’m wrong, scroll up to that opinion poll again. 47% of people think May will create a fairer society than Corbyn’s paltry 37%. Look at it – and learn.

2) ‘Ok, so Corbyn let us down over Brexit – but what else could he have done?’

Well… turning up for the referendum campaign would have been a start. Revisionist Corbynista acolytes blindly refuse to acknowledge any responsibility on their saviour’s behalf but Jeremy’s near sabotage of the Labour Remain campaign is well documented. Remain lost by just over 1.3m votes so all we needed was another 650,000 little pencil crosses and we wouldn’t be in the truly terrifying mess we’re in right now. Whilst the reasons for the Leave victory are many and complex (as grippingly recounted in Tim Shipman’s fantastic book, All Out War) it’s hard to believe that an enthusiastic pro-EU Labour leader, seizing the opportunity and the agenda couldn’t have secured that. For all their own shortcomings, I have absolutely no doubt that either Andy Burnham or Yvette Copper could have got those votes… easily.

What else could Corbyn have done? Well, he could have consulted with his shadow cabinet colleagues on the small matter of Labour Party Policy before coming out at 7.28 am on the morning of 24th June 2016 and calling for Article 50 to be invoked as soon as possible. And people are surprised that most of the shadow cabinet resigned? They are often blamed for their ‘disloyalty’, but hey – pot-calling-the-skillet-le-creuset! – they hardly had a choice in the circumstances.

Oh yeah, and then we get to the bloody ‘will of the people’ and invoking a three line whip for Labour MPs to wave Article 50 through the Commons. Labour policy is something to do with ‘holding the government to account’ but exactly how this is to be achieved now the party has completely rolled over on the issue is quite beyond this tufty little simian.

From up in my tree, savouring my exudates, it is nothing less than the betrayal of a generation.

Corbyn apologists argue that he had no choice. The People Had Decided – ‘The Issue of Brexit Is Settled’ yadda yadda – and crucially Labour is haemorraghing votes in Labour heartlands to UKIP. Well, let’s look under the bonnet of that particular premise.

Offering a convincing counter narrative might have been something worth considering. Just maybe? As the reality of Brexit bears down upon us, the zeitgeist of 2017 is that of a nation – Remain and Leave voters alike – looking down the barrel of a gun.

looking-down-the-barrel-01

Corbyn derides May for taking a confrontational stance with Brussels, but with the barrel right in our faces, which strategy is going to play best with a nervous/terrified electorate?

‘Please can we stay in the single market, and we’re happy to fulfil any conditions to achieve that even if we have no power in the union any more, pretty please…’
or
…whipping out our own weaponry and snarling: ‘Go ahead, Juncker, make my day’. The electorate are feeling that, given the choice, they’d rather die on their feet than live on their knees, which is why Labour-UKIP defectors are now turning to the Conservatives in their extremely crucial hundreds of thousands.

go-ahead-make-my-day-quote-1

Bizarrely, Theresa May is capturing the Clint Eastwood vote

Emily Thornberry – Labour’s patroniser-in-chief – pops up on the telly, almost daily, to tell us that Labour has no choice but to look both ways, as they try to satisfy both urban Labour Remainers and Labour heartland Brexiteers but you can see in her eyes – and the doleful look in Keir Starmer’s sad little peepers – that she knows it’s a confusing, untenable and impotent fudge.

So what was the alternative?

The clue’s in that last word – Labour could only seize the agenda by offering an actual alternative. Corbyn’s strategy is to try not to mention the ‘B’ word at all, but there is no way round the cold hard fact that this is the Brexit election. There is absolutely no way Labour can kick Brexit off the top of the agenda. A savvy Labour leader would  have stopped trying to dodge that particular bullet, and rather made a grab for the gun itself.

Yes. It would have been a very high risk strategy, but the opportunity was there for anyone bold enough to take it. If the Tories want a Brexit election then let them have it, but pitch Labour as the party that will withdraw from Article 50 and hold the EU together.

Be bold. Use the election to re-run the referendum.

Labour are barely scraping 30% in the polls.  Why not make a pitch for the 48% who were desperate to Remain in the EU… and rather than accusing Tory or Leave voters of being knuckle-dragging moral scum offer frightened Leave voters a way out of this mess.

Look. I’m not saying I know this would have worked – I have no hard evidence to say that the numbers stack up in the required marginals – and the time when this might have been a realistic option has most definitely passed – many former remainers just want to get on with Brexit – but even now it seems a far stronger, and more responsible pitch than the chicken broth Labour are offering the electorate at the moment. I choose ‘chicken’ as my flavour advisedly.

Yes, the Labour manifesto has a few salty promises, but it still runs scared of the single issue that will decide the outcome.

To go into an election, supporting an ill-defined, half baked Brexit (surely the ultimate ‘Tory-lite’ and I don’t even approve of that phrase), promising to borrow half a trillion plus god knows how much at a time of huge economic uncertainty, dissing anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations, declaring war on a vaguely defined ‘other’… and telling people daily how awful everything is… well, it doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that Theresa May’s poll lead remains stubbornly beyond any previously recorded polling error.

1) ‘We must unite to defeat the Tories at all costs!!’  

Oh yes, this is definitely at number one.

This mantra of the left… the same people who told anyone who doubted the Corbyn project to ‘Fuck off and join the Tories!’.

Well, whaddya know? They did.

But wait… there’s a real election happening and Labour are about to get absolutely hammered so suddenly the devout are realising that far from winning a majority being some sort of bourgeois Blairite peccadillo, without it the country will be well and truly stuffed.

Screen Shot 2017-05-10 at 05.22.06

The founder of Momentum proving the utter stupidity of the hard left

Meanwhile, the ex-journalistic tragedy that is Paul Mason, who, a few months ago could be seen on our TV screens, jabbing his finger, muttering darkly about mass deselections is now twitching on the Newnight panel calling for a progressive alliance.

‘Seriously Paul, go fuck yourself.’ Sorry to swear in such a personally abusive way, but that was what I shouted at my telly the other night. The rank hypocrisy of calling for us all to unite to stop the Tories at all costs. If he and his kind really believed in ‘stopping the Tories at all costs’ then they wouldn’t have voted for a complete numpty to run the party… TWICE!

Screen Shot 2016-08-09 at 11.37.30

These days Paul works hard to keep his jabbing finger under control

Other voices from Planet Corbo simply say ‘hold your nose’, vote for Jeremy. Let’s have a period of purdah where you keep your eviscerating anti-Corbyn blogs to yourself.

Give me a break. It really doesn’t matter what I think, or what I say. I’m just a rare and rather cute little marmoset. It’s neither here nor there whether the lefty chaterati on Facebook or Twitter are critical of the J-Corb – mostly we’re just talking to our own gang anyway. Whether or not different factions of the left think he’s incompetent and a liability – as I do – is irrelevant. That’s not going to affect the result. I’m voting Labour anyway, even if I do think he’s a waste of skin.

The only pertinent issue is whether non partisan, floating voters can be persuaded to trust the guy. They’re not listening to any squabbles we have – nor would the pretence that I, for example, thought for a second Corbyn could make a competent PM convince one floating voter to cast their vote his his way in a marginal. No. They’ll make that decision for themselves. Shutting up about it won’t improve things. We can’t pretend he’s doing a good job when he isn’t, as if somehow if we all close our eyes the very obvious shortfalls of him and his so-called team will go away. They won’t. The real problem isn’t me being rude on Facebook or this blog – that’s of no importance whatsoever – but the indifference of the voting public to someone they recognise as neither worth their vote, nor a passing thought.

As my wonderful Sheffield mother-in-law is wont to say: ‘Jeremy Corbyn? He’s got nothing about him.’

If we want the result to be not quite as bad as the polls suggest then we really need to tackle the strategy – not for getting pissed-off Labour centrists on board – but all the other people who are needed to make this thing slightly less of the car crash it’s promising to be.

***

If I sound angry and contemptuous – it’s because I am. I’m frightened as well. Really frightened – more so than any time in my life.

And I do lay what’s happening – from Brexit to the upcoming electoral catastrophe – firmly at the door of the persistent Corbyn believer. Je most definitely accuse.

The point blank refusal to acknowledge an overwhelming accumulation of evidence – which has far exceeded the Marmoset’s worst expectations – puts them in the same category as flat-earthers, homeopaths and creationists – and if I have no respect for those people, then I certainly can’t be respectful of evidence-denying Corbyn believers.

Faith over empiricism. No thanks.

As Michael Heseltine famously said: ‘Labour will win again, when it wants to win’. And that will be when we remember that being in power is the primary objective of Labour as a political party, and that electioneering IS an exact science.

Empiricism over faith. Always.

As for the Marmoset’s bottom ten desperate political clichés… to be fair, most of them stem from people’s desperation, but that makes them no less frustrating.

We need to stop thinking so simplistically. We need to get smart. We need to win again.

***

Of course, at the time of writing there are four whole weeks until polling day, during which time Theresa May could be caught doing something unspeakable to a kitten – or to National Treasure Alan Bennet with a slice of Battenberg – or both, at the same time, and on live TV..!

In which case, all bets are off, and you can scratch all of the above.

2410047_152894_b852cb9aa6_p

The Marmoset scratching all of the above.

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Please Do Not Feed The Conspiracy Theorists!!

23 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Martin Jameson in Conspiracy Theories, Edward Heath, Islamism, Jonathan Swift, Moroccan Cuisine, Politics, Satire

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

9/11, Baba Ganoush, Charlie Hebdo, Cyril Smith, Dolphin Square, Edward Heath, Irony, ISIS, Islamic State, Jimmy Savile, More Irony, Pine Nuts Toasted on Home Made Hummus, Really a lot of Irony, Tzatziki

It all began well enough, rather deliciously in fact, as most comfortable middle class left-of-centre dinner parties do. There were starters of carpaccio sliced fennel in oil and lemon juice with Maldon sea salt; two types of home made hummus – one with toasted pine nuts, the other with sautéed lamb, plus a side jug of lemon and mint to drizzle over it… and a particularly tasty conspiracy theory to get the ball rolling.

‘I knew someone, who knew this Soho madam…’ says the slightly hunched woman with the eighties perm who struggles with eye contact to my right, ‘…and this madam told me that in the 1970s, she regularly supplied Tory prime minister Edward Heath with Moroccan boys, who would be smuggled into the country for him to have sex with, and then smuggled out again.’ The pitta bread arrives. ‘That’s what Morning Cloud was for.’

Edward Heath at the helm of his sex hideaway

1970s UK Prime Minister, Edward Heath at the helm of his sex hideaway

‘Ah well,’ I’m feeling a little mischievous, ‘Moroccan boys were terribly fashionable back then, you know, Joe Orton and all that.’

‘Oh no,’ she sternly corrects me, ‘these were boys. Six or seven year old boys. With the full knowledge of Special Branch.’

A bowl of home made baba ganoush arrives, sprinkled with luscious pomegranate seeds.

Yummy conspiracy food

Yummy conspiracy food

I can’t help thinking that’s an awful lot of trouble to go to for a bit of child sexual abuse (not the home made Levantine hors d’oeuvres, the child smuggling. Doh! Keep up!), when most child abusers settle for easy access opportunistic satisfaction.

And I should have left it that – as a thought – but hey, when did that ever stop me?

You see, my problem is this: Clearly all sorts of truly awful, horrific, stuff went on – goes on! – but like most things in life, people are kinda lazy, obvious, banal. Jimmy Savile wore elasticated tracksuits so he could whip it out, and put it back at a moment’s notice.

Jimmy Savile favoured the banal convenience of the tracksuit

Jimmy Savile favoured the banal convenience of the elasticated tracksuit

(Sorry am I putting you off your tzatziki?)

Creamy levantine hors d'ouevre

Creamy levantine hors d’ouevre

The hard work generally goes into the set-up. You know the kind of thing, raising millions for charity, becoming a trusted priest, training to be a gifted music teacher… That gives you the access, and the status you need; after that it’s about maximising opportunity. The least work for the most gain.

A lot of professions are like that. It takes years to become a doctor; but hours and hours on the golf course await you once you’ve got there.

So I can follow the establishment paedophile ring narrative as far as Alderman Cyril Smith exploiting his role to gain access to children’s homes and variations on that theme. And I guess he had the inside on other high ranking types with similar proclivities, enough to blackmail them on an ad hoc basis to get himself unarrested every time he got more brazen and careless than normal.

For those unfamiliar with UK current affairs, this is the delightful Alderman Cyril Smith, Liberal politician and serial child abuser.

For those unfamiliar with UK current affairs, this is the delightful Alderman Cyril Smith, Liberal politician and serial child abuser.

But a shady cabal of senior politicos, security chiefs, with nothing better to spend their time on but the systematic and collective abuse of children, in organised child abuse events, sex parties or what have you…? Hmm… I start to struggle a bit. Not because I have a blind faith in our political class, nor because I can’t imagine terrible, terrible things being done to children by powerful people. But because…

There’s a reason I don’t hold parties. They’re such a bloody time consuming faff. And yes, I confess, the vast majority of parties I’ve organised in my life have involved children… and jelly… and party bags… and politically correct pass-the-parcel where everybody has to win something. Bloody exhausting. These days however, the sorts of parties I hold don’t require anything more risqué than a Tesco Mediterranean Dip Medley (I can’t be arsed slaving over home made hummus) and bread sticks; the crudest thing you’ll find at my place is a crudité. But god, the invitations, the shopping, the planning, the mess…! The ones with the kids are the worst!!!

I know, I know, I’m being flippant in fabulously bad taste – but I’m making a completely serious point too. Some of the events described in recent news reports sound extraordinarily, exhaustingly labour intensive – on a par with mounting a theatre event, or a day’s independent film production. You’d need an administrator, or a damned fine 2nd AD.  So let’s think about this in practical production terms.  

Currently under investigation as the alleged location of historical sex abuse by a cabal of MPs, security and military chiefs.

Currently under investigation as the alleged location of historical sex abuse by a cabal of MPs, security and military chiefs.

Procuring all these children in a collective setting requires personnel – lots of personnel. You need drivers, catering – for the parties – cleaning staff (presumably at Dolphin Square there would have been more than a little mess), and in the case of the smuggled Moroccan children, how are they being transported? Private planes? In which case that involves air traffic control, airfield staff etc. If they’re coming in on commercial jets then you need a whole infrastructure of people on the inside to escort them.  You’ve got to pay/bribe these ancillary workers. That involves negotiating each fee individually (I doubt there’s an industry rate) and providing an income stream, which will require some kind of crude accounting system. All organised crime tends to involve bookkeepers or quartermasters of some sort.  

By the way, if you think I’m beyond the pale with this line of reasoning, then let me tell you this delightful anecdote. Early in my career I worked at a well known english repertory theatre where the directors’ PA told me that she had regularly cleaned a variety of bodily fluids off the walls of the office after the directorial predecessor’s late night ‘casting’ sessions. I use the word ‘variety’ advisedly.

Too gross? Well….perhaps, but that’s my point. Working in a collective environment it was impossible not to involve the staff, and the more people who are involved with something, the less likely you’ll keep it a secret. Presumably that’s why the police investigation has made a public appeal for precisely these kinds of witnesses. It’ll be interesting to see what that throws up. A systematic, large scale, industrial conspiracy requires a large scale, industrial infra structure. The police are clearly looking for that infra-structure too. They also say they are challenged by a mismatch of victim numbers to corroborate the industrial abuse scenario. Again, hopefully the various promises of indemnities will ensure a greater throughput of witnesses to confirm things either way.

So back at the dinner table, a gargantuan Le Creuset has arrived filled with steaming aromatic chicken and artichoke tagine, along with a bowl of al dente oven baked couscous. Something of a Moroccan theme developing here….

With further bad taste, I’ve playfully – but seriously – expounded my infra-structure theory (look, I didn’t start it!) only to be countered by a stern, impregnable look of loathing from the woman opposite, for whom eye contact is a weapon. Surely I must understand that the very invisibility of this infrastructure, the sheer scale of secrecy is evidence in itself of The Establishment at its conspiratorial best/worst!

Ah yes. The Establishment. That smoking neon sign hanging over the shadowy doorway in every conspiracy theorist’s paranoid imagination.

The Establishment...

The Establishment…

I’m never quite sure precisely what or who the establishment is – or even what The Establishment is! – but I know one thing about it for sure.

It’s a bit crap.

Those who hold power in our country – in the world in fact – appear to me more as somewhat nightmarish comedy fire fighters, clowns in the rattling fire engine of state, who botch their way from crisis to crisis – often self generated – trusting to luck with the economy, barely able to run the most basic of national infra-structures, squirting napalm in each others faces while the doors fall off and the poorest are squashed beneath the rubber wheels of government, their screams lost beneath all the hysterical honking of political horns. A glimpse at transport policy, health policy, defence policy, any policy you care to name, will surely reassure you that the only thing established in the establishment is… chaos.

...or the establishment?

…or the establishment?

Indeed, the same CTs (conspiracy theorists) who talk darkly of decades of highly polished, stiletto bladed conspiracy, will in the next breath bemoan the utter failure of policy or coherence emanating from the very same shadowy enemies who are somehow brilliantly machiavellian – and ostentatiously incompetent – at the same time.

Although, to be fair, I’ve heard it seriously argued that government is DELIBERATELY run in a chaotic fashion so as to distract us from the more sinister calculating agendas lurking under the surface. Oh yes, and apparently wars and terrorism are both fabricated for the same reason. Adam Curtis makes a tidy living producing sooth sayer TV documentaries about it. Well. You can’t prove a negative.

There’s a satirical part of me that wishes that the shadowy cabal theory of everything were true – because perhaps one day all the brilliant secret government conspirators will apply their talents to running the National Health Service, after which time no one will ever be ill again!

So back to Ted Heath’s yacht, and his smuggled Moroccan six year olds. I’m trying to satirise my way out of this in the face of my conspiratorial inquisitor, who is now looking at me as if I have a small Moroccan child stuffed down my trousers.

I joke: ‘It’s like that scene in Austin Powers about Dr Evil’s Henchmen. Mike Myers wonders – just like I always did as a kid – who are these henchmen? Where do they live? Do they have families? Should we care if they get killed? It’s a funny sketch because we know that the idea of building a secret base inside a hollowed out volcano is completely ridiculous. I mean, you couldn’t keep a great big thing like that secret, and that’s why there are no secret bases inside hollowed out volcanoes.’

Glary woman looks at me coldly: ‘How do you know there aren’t?’

This place definitely exists

This place definitely exists

I am forced to admit that of course I don’t. You can’t prove a negative – the WMD of choice for the conspiracy theorist.

‘And,’ she’s tasted blood, now, ‘It’s the collective thing that binds them in their secrecy; the fear of what will happen if they break ranks. I mean, what about Leon Brittan?’
What about him?
‘It’s a bit stange, isn’t it, him dying?’
He was seventy five and he’d had cancer for two years.
‘Just as the truth is coming to the surface??? It’s a bit convenient.’
Whatever Mr Brittan may or not have done, I am actually lost for words at this point.
‘Perhaps he killed himself,’ someone else pipes up, helpfully, as if that were a more plausible scenario.

I’m actually old enough to remember when left wing conspiracy theorists would earnestly argue that the rumours about Leon Brittan (which have been around for decades) were actually spread by MI6 for reasons that have long since eluded me and that despite looking a bit greasy, he was completely innocent of anything apart from being a Tory.

Conspiracy theories are like a game of consequences, random nuggets of paranoia that can be assembled in any order for your amusement.

At this point, I should make something clear. I have no problem with accepting the reality of conspiracies – they’re banal, messy, dirty and fundamentally obvious things – it’s conspiracy theories I feel the intense need to ridicule. For they are just that – theories. Conspiracy theories are, generally, a manifestation of collective paranoid psychoses; constructed dystopian narratives that stand apart from reality. Mostly they are pretty harmless – perhaps they are a social mutation of an ancient collective fear reflex – but the reason they annoy me so much, is that at their heart they are arrogant and egotistical – saying more about the theorists than the theorised – and they belittle everyone involved – the real victims, and the perpetrators too.

Hang on, what am I talking about there? Belittling perpetrators?? What on earth are you on about Jameson? Pass the harissa, this tagine needs a bit more spice.

Ok, so I have a relative who lives in the United States, to whom I can barely talk these days because it’s so hard to manoeuvre around what is, in effect, a psychotic reinvention of world realities. To be fair, there appears to be a substantial tranche of the US left for whom, I guess, their political isolation has led them to share a collective disbelief/distrust of everything, apart from their own ever more extraordinary scenarios. This disbelief appears to be mirrored in the American far-right as well. Perhaps there’s a sense of safety in sharing these mystical beliefs. But that’s odd, because the US hardly hides its propensity for political manipulation or the tendency for its foreign policy to wreak global havoc. I’m always amazed why the CTs feel the need to invent another layer of it.

Before I learned to laugh at this nonsense, I once found myself in a ridiculous discussion on the New York subway where my rellie tried to convince me that the reason the National Union of Mineworkers lost the 1984/5 miners’ strike is because Arthur Scargill was placed there by MI5/CIA in order to discredit the British labour movement and deliberately lose this important industrial dispute. It got so heated we ended up out in one of the boroughs, when we were only going to the Carnegie Deli to eat huge pastrami on rye sandwiches.

Now, as it happens, it has since been confirmed that there was indeed an MI5 informant at the heart of the NUM (it was suspected at the time) passing strategical info on to Special Branch. But Arthur Scargill a CIA agent? I know these pages are read by good people from all around the globe, who may be unfamiliar with the man, but trust me on this, Arthur Scargill the CIA infiltrator is a brilliantly amusing idea…. conjuring up a sort of Yorkshire Jack Bauer with extremely bad hair.

CIA Super Agent Arthur Scargill

CIA Super Agent Arthur Scargill

But. It’s also insulting. It actually says that miners are idiots; blind, naive fools suckered by an evil cabal of political agents provocateur. And perhaps it’s poor old Arthur’s final humiliation to be written off by the american left as a CIA stooge. And then think of the organisation… Did Thatcher know? The Iron Lady and Special Agent Scargill ‘pretending’ to be at war with each other whilst secretly sniggering at the the rest of us poor fools behind their backs?

More recently my relative has announced on Facebook that Anders Breivik was a false flag operation instigated by Mossad in order to punish Norway for its support of the Palestinians. This one did make me angry. There’s something about hijacking that awful bloody tragedy just to serve your own self-loathing-US-centric agenda that absolutely trashes the memory of all those young people. It is, in itself, a form of obscene political colonialism.

And of course she believes that 9/11 was a Mossad put-up job. I’m not going to rehearse those arguments here, but when, today, she also adamantly advertises that ISIS is a CIA/MI6/Mossad false flag organisation, I actually start to feel sorry for the terrorists. I imagine them in their camps, reading this stuff online and screaming at their screens: ‘Oi! Conspiracy theorist!! No!!! We’re trying to fight a holy war here you arrogant egocentric bastard!! We’re genuinely oppressed and extremely pissed off and we’re prepared to kill for it!! We don’t need Mossad’s help thank you very much.’

I love the Mossad thing – CTs who believe Mossad is behind EVERYTHING. They’ll happily list all the terrible things that Israel, the USA and the UK have done to the Middle East, but then they decide that the shat-upon-people of that region somehow don’t actually have the organisational ability to mount their own Jihad. Oh yes, by the way, did you know that Charlie Hebdo was a false flag operation by Mossad to frighten french Jews and get them to move to Israel? Yeah, well you do now.

Like I say. It insults everyone. Good guys, bad guys (you can allocate the labels as your politics determines, I’m easy).

Back to the dinner party and a mouthwatering desert of caramelised apple tart arrives.  I’m informed that I’m obviously not as left wing as my conspiracy chums – as if belief in unsubstantiated conspiracy is directly proportional to radical political thought. Which is both wrong, and philosophically paralysing, in the most arrogant of ways.

We’re on to coffee now, a sweet and delicious vietnamese blend, which takes us away from conspiracies, thank god, and Glary Woman is talking about her passion for Doctor Who.

Must be all those parallel universes.

But I suppose that’s why I find fantasy fiction so tedious. The real world does it for me. Vulnerable kids were, and are, abused all over the place, in the most ordinary of ways, and mostly in private dark, lonely locations. Powerful men will have paid for sex with under aged boys – as they have done for centuries. They ducked and dived. They pulled in favours. They used their status and their contacts, and people’s fear of putting their heads above the parapet, losing their jobs etc to get away with it…

…but if we discover that it was all a lot more random and seedy than the more lurid scenarios suggest, I hope we won’t feel “disappointed” that it was all so run of the mill.  Let’s make sure we don’t fall prey to needing the victims to be six year old Moroccan kids smuggled in by a vast establishment cabal. Let’s make sure we don’t find ourselves needing all the victims to be prepubescent children, as if the exploitation of a fifteen year old rent boy isn’t bad enough.

Let’s not make this about the dark recesses of our imagination and our hatred for authority, and forget to be shocked by the way exploitation and terrible pain is too often so bloody ordinary.

But, as I have said several times now (this Moroccan cuisine does rather repeat on you), I can’t prove a negative, and although I’m as rationally as sure as I can be that the most likely place we’ll find the now-middle-aged collective of Heath’s Moroccan 1970s sex victims is inside a hollowed out volcano – that is no reassurance at all.

For me, it is the conspiracy theories that are the distraction.

And that’s why I, for one, ‘Do Not Feed The Conspiracy Theorists’.

empty plate

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