Saturday, August 20, 2005

Jamie Oliver (II)

Oh, and another thing.

Two million people marched through Central London to stop our government killing people they'd never meet: it had no effect whatsoever. Yet a fat-tongued Sainsburys-pushing celebrity chef squeals about chicken nuggets and government policy is changed within hours. That's democracy in action.

Friday, April 15, 2005

Jamie Oliver

There are many reasons to hate Jamie Oliver (his enormous tongue, his moped, his fantastic wealth), but to all right-thinking beings the primary one must be this: as of the current series of Sesame Street Cookie Monster will from now on show moderation in the eating of cookies. Which, quite frankly, is diseased and wrong and all the fault of Jamie Bloody Oliver.

Let us, for a moment, put to one side the fact that in Jamie's School Dinners he based most of his argument on the palpable untruths that today's children are likely to live less-long than their parents and that one boy's food was so bad that he vomit up his own faeces, thus becoming yet another of the boils on society who assume the British public is too stupid, illiterate and crazed on Sunny Delight to make a decision based on actual facts rather than things they have just made up. Let us leave to one side the fact that school dinners have always been tasteless, nutritionless pap, and that anyone who believes that perhaps the resources of the nation's schools might be better spent on teachers and books than butternut squash must now be held to be a reactionary curmudgeon who has forgotten that kids are so hopelessly obtuse that any attempt to educate them is doomed to failure.

Let us instead focus on the real problem, the problem that puts Cookie Monster on a diet. The fact is that Jamie Oliver should not be focussing his fire on schools, who must attempt to provide meals with the 4p per child they are given to spend each year. The fact that the Turkey Twizzler looby has not yet launched a counter-campaign suggests that they are not all that worried about schools no longer buying their products,m because they know that as soon as the children return home their parents will shove the same processed goo through their neck-holes until they can hardly move.

Why not, Jamie, instead of blaming politicians, or dinner ladies, or caterers, why not go after those who profit directly from the creation of foods made from chicken genitals reshaped to look like mobile phones? Why not attack those who are really the root of the problem? Why not have a go at the food industry, Jamie?

Because you don't like to interfere in the free market which has provided you with endless book deals and television programmes? Or perhaps because you don't care anywhere near as much about what children eat as you do about how often your pasty, grease-ridden face appears on our screens?

Instead, by attacking educators you effectively divert everyone's attention from those who are really at fault. It's not Cookie Monster's fault everyone in America is clinically obese, it's that of the people who grind animals into a paste, which they then bread and fry. Helpfully, those in and around education tend to be those who will be most affected by your pleas, and so they probably will change their policies, for whatever minute good it might do, whereas those who do the most damage to our health, with most profit for themselves, don't give a toss.

And with people like you around, they don't have to.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Little Britain

I hate watching David Walliams, looking for all the world like a crow with its skin on inside out, screech and gurn across the screen, the knowledge that he is less funny then the cellulite on Matt Lucas' thighs etched across his wizened, desperate features. It's like listening to a lobster die.

I hate seeing the same jokes, most not worthy of repetition, ever-more hysterically overplayed week-by-week, until the one grain of truth which contained whatever humour they may have held initially, is swamped by catchphrases shouted ever louder.

I hate the fact that you can hear the butts of the jokes reciting the lines wherever you go. If the scum aren't offended, you're not doing your fucking job. Go back and try harder, and this time make them as soulless and unlovable as they are in real life.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

The Cross of St. George (II)

And now, thank fuck, we can take them all down because a fat Liverpudlian's shoe fell off.

As an example of how deep the love of the English for their (Cappadocian) patron saint is, I offer this:

In 1451, the English garrison at Bayonne, surrendered to the French, and removed the red cross from all of their tabards and shoes and things because a white cross (which was then all the rage on French tabards and shoes and things) had been seen in the sky. They said God was obviously trying to turn them French.

The fact that it never occurred to them that most clouds are white says all we need to know about the late-mediaeval/early-modern period. It was rubbish.

The Cross of St George

Imagine the scene:

"Nice flags you're hanging out there, Heinrich."

"Why, thank you, Hans."

"Except, if you don't mind me saying so, they appear to be covered in swastikas."

"That's right, Hans."

"But isn't the swastika a symbol of bigotry and racism and a reminder of one of the most shameful periods of our recent history?"

"That's where you're wrong, Hans. The swastika is an ancient Vedic symbol, usually assumed to represent the sun. I'm reclaiming it from the racists."

"Oh. But isn't the red background also typical of the National Socialist stylings of that very symbol?"

"Not at all, Hans. I wish to express my sympathy for the original, socialistic aims of the Munich Workers' Party, as expressed in the Fourteen Points, resolved in 1919. That the symbol was later appropriated by a fascist clique is all the more reason for those of us who truly believe in a socialist Germany to hang out the swastikas."

"I see. Do you not feel that it might be construed by some to be a little insensitive?"

"Not at all. Those people are namby-pamby liberals with no sense of national pride. They should probably be gassed to death."

"Thank you, Heinrich. That's all very clear to me now."