Damned Cheek!

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

– Socrates

“The unlived life is not worth examining”

– Anonymous.

‘Life has not ravaged me because I have never lived’

– Me

‘I do think the right wing press is evil’

Michael Portillo

Amanda Platell’s ‘contribution’ to the ‘Karen Matthews’ debate can be found here.  It is referenced on this blog.  Ms. Platell proceeds to label ‘Formula 1 champion and Swiss resident Lewis Hamilton’  ‘hypocrite of the week’.

This is the same Amanda Platell who was press officer to William Hague from 1997-2001. No, it is Ms. Platell who is the hypocrite of the week. Hypocrite of the century. Those of us with a half decent memory recall how she betrayed the Tories after the general election of 2001. She kept a ‘secret video diary’ of the election campaign and then unleashed it on the world when the Tories, to whom she had pledged her loyalty, lost.  She exploited their downfall.  What motivated her then? Greed and the desire for fame would be my guess which makes her, ultimately, no better than the ‘terrifying underclass’ she condemns.  Karen Matthews, she asserts, is the ‘personification of that terrifying growing phenomenon: a feckless, amoral, workshy, benefit-dependent underclass’.  Ms. Platell is, in my humble opinion*, the personification of the lack of personal loyalty endemic in the ‘political class’.  And, if those people can’t be loyal to one another, then how can we expect them to honour their commitments to the public?

*A phrase that will probably never emanate from the keyboard of Ms. Platell.

Addendum: And, according to this blogger, every member of the ‘underclass’ is a clone of Karen Matthews.  This is what she has to say about Ms. Matthews’s neighbours: ‘I know all the neighbours ‘rallied round’ but these are exactly the same people who would also get up a lynch mob in a nanosecond, were there even a whisper of paedophilia in their area.’ (Let’s rephrase that sentence: ‘these are exactly the same people who would get up a lynch mob in a nanosecond, were there even a whisper of  ‘a member of the underclass’ in the area’.  That’s more like it.  The words ‘pot’ and ‘kettle’ spring to mind for some reason. Cool header/graphics though!)

My Response: ‘I can’t see how you could possibly know that.  And the ‘lynch mob’ mentality you refer to can be found in our mainstream media, in newspapers staffed by (mostly) middle class journalists.’

Addendum 2: :  the nihilist in me, however, finds it hard to disagree with this: ‘It’s hard for me to imagine being so brutish and de-sensitised, living each day totally in the moment, like a hyena. If that is the direction we are heading in as a species then we may as well just nuke the lot just now and leave it to the cockroaches.’  I don’t believe, however, that people who live their lives in this manner are confined to a particular social class.  If you want proof of that then look at the antics of the so-called British ‘aristocracy’.  And I derive hope from stories such as this. The sentence handed down by the judge was pretty derisory and this case received relatively little publicity in the British media.  One fact the journalists picked up on was that reading was for this girl a ‘passion’. I hope she can carry that with her into the future. I hope she succeeds in spite of the abuse that was inflicted upon her by her so-called parents. No one should be written off and many people from abusive backgrounds can and do make a success of their lives. No one is ‘doomed’ to failure and, if society believes that they are and condemns them to a state of eternal victimhood, then it is compounding the injustice inflicted upon them by those who were supposed to care for them.  And this, heartbreakingly, is the future that certain people seem to be wishing upon Shannon Matthews.  That is the last thing this little girl needs right now.  What she needs, more than anything else in the world, is for people to believe in her.

And for some reason every time I think about the Matthews children a phrase enters my head: ‘Done because we are too menny.’

In case you’re curious, my opinions on ‘mindless procreation’ and promiscuity can be found here and here.  In the meantime instead of  ‘paying people to have brats’ (not my words) we should pay people to have cats because they’re cooler and cheaper to keep and you don’t have to spend half your life looking like a beached whale!

A little late but while I was on my travels I came across this on Deborah Lipstadt’s blog.  Channel Four never had much of a mind to lose. Controversy at any price.

Yet Another Freaking Addendum: I wonder if people regard the behaviour of the bloke in this article as being ‘typical’ of the ‘educated middle classes’ aka the Übermenschen.  A rhetorical question really because we all know they wouldn’t and I’d be prepared to stake my life on that.  And they’d be right not to.  Unlike Karen Matthews he is not expected to be ‘an ambassador for his class’. Funny that.

Tags: Amanda Platell, blogosphere, cats instead of brats, greed, hypocrisy, Jude the Obscure, Karen Matthews, Michael Portillo, politics, the Daily Mail, Thomas Hardy, Tories