The Official 'Eric the Cell' Week of Hate

People often come up to me and say, "Stephen, you're a massive jerk".  (Well at least I'm a massive one).  "But you're also such a busy guy.  You hold down a job, you have various fascinating hobbies and such interesting and witty friends." (This is all definitely true)  "How do you find time out of your busy schedule to be consistently such an ass to so many different people?"

Well, I say to them.  It's simple really, and you can do it too.  Because with bigotry, as with everything in life, the key is planning. So Let me tell you how. With my patented 'Week of Hate' you'll never run out of time to hate some pain-in-the-ass minority again. With its simple day by day plan you'll always know who to insult, blame for the fact your life sucks, make crude, unfunny jokes about, unfairly turn down for a job, and generally act like a complete douchebag towards.

The idea is each day you focus your dickery on the one pre-specified group given for that day.  This allows more efficient focus, giving you time to be creative, while ensuring each minority gets their own slot.  That way no-one is left out. And because it repeats every week you have plenty of chances to hone your efforts. This will free up time, allowing you to get more done with your day while being sure you'll fit in all the discrimination and bigotry you need to boost your fragile self-esteem.  It even comes with catchy names to help you remember.    

Psychologists have proven with SCIENCE the important positive effect of clear planning and a regular schedule and now you can apply these powerful insights to exercising your mindless prejudice. It's so simple that even YOU will be able to understand it.

So here it is, the Official Eric the Cell  'Week of Hate'. The first word in Organised Bigotry:

Anti-Papist Tuesdays

Misogyny Wednesdays

Anti-Presbytarian Thursdays

Homophobic Fridays

Anti-Semitic Saturdays

Sunday is the Lord's day, and so we rest.

And on Mondays we oppose Racism.  Because racism is just wrong.

With my plan you'll be able to cram even more unpleasantness into your week and still leave more time for other things.  That means more time to play sports, watch some TV, go fishing, erect burning crosses, or whatever other ignorant shit it is you like to do with your spare time.

The key is to not take the headings as restrictive.  Take them as an opportunity to use your imagination.  For example you can stretch misogyny wednesdays out to involve not just being unpleasant to women but also people who appreciate romantic comedies, people with long hair, or just anyone who has an unusually impressive pair of man boobs. With a little bit of imagination you can achieve anything. Here's just one way to expand out the Headings to ensure you're never short of largely powerless people to victimise and belittle:

Anti -Papist Tuesdays - More than a Billion Catholics and breeding fast, or just anyone called Mary. Definitely a growth area.  Plenty of people to hate here.

Misogyny Wednesdays -  3.5 billion women.  And some of them aren't even in a Kitchen making you a sandwich.  But also not just for women.  Also people who can bake, knit, struggle to read a map, or anyone who owns a man bag.

Anti-Presbytarian Thusdays - As far as I know the defining feature of being a Presbytarian is not having Bishops.  So that includes Presbytarians, Quakers, Scots, Atheists, Muslims and most of the animal Kingdom.  Go on, use your imagination.

Homophobic Friday - We don't discriminate here, we hate everyone equally, so we make sure to include an equal space for anyone who self-defines under the Pride Umbrella. LGBT, LGBTUA, LGBTUAA++, or my personal favourite FABGLITTER (Fetish, Allies, Bisexual,Gay, Lesbian, Intergender, Transgender, Engendering Revolution).  Now that's an Acronym.  Also of course anyone who studies queer theory, queer theology, or has ever watched 'Queer as Folk'.

Anti-Semitic Saturdays - Did you know Arabs are a Semitic people too? And also Assyrians, Maganites and Maltesers (from Malta).  Think of the opportunities!

Sunday is the Lord's day and so we rest.

And on Mondays we fight Racism - Remember Kids! Hope not Hate!

Feel free to work out your own ways to pad out the week. Because remember, like all bigots, we don't really care about consistency. So there you go.  I hope you have many years of happy, efficient dick-ery and generally being as obnoxious  as possible with the Official 'Week of Hate'.  But don't take my word for it. Listen to this real life feedback I personally received from some foreigner who happened to be over here stealing our jobs or something.

"When I first came here I expected it to be full of self-righteous assholes.  But you [Stephen] are even worse!"
Barbara Hubinska, 2011.  
(Please note, when reading this quote, to put on a thick "Central European" accent or it doesn't really work.  Practice by saying 'wodka', 'wodka', wodka', over and over again until you get it. )


Thanks for reading,
Stephen Wigmore.

 

The Jeremy Corbyn story nobody wanted to publish - because it's boring and irrelevant

because it's staggeringly boring and irrelevant.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/the-jeremy-corbyn-story-that-nobody-wanted-to-publish-a6848651.html 

This is probably the most pompous article I have ever read.

It is really quite hard to express just how confused and detached from reality it is. I would almost swear it is a satire. You really have to read it for yourself. Just some highlights are below.

"Yesterday, I wrote a blog about the Jeremy Corbyn tour – known as #JC4PM – which the media had failed to cover." The title is a hashtag, but then this is charity aid tour by liberal left, media, cool people. Of course the title is a fucking hashtag

 "Journalist after journalist told me that the story was ‘not newsworthy’." An entertainment tour about Jeremy Corbyn. What could be more important? In the last few days there's only been the Iowa Caucus, the EU renegotiation, the death of Terry Wogan, various wars and the global economy to write about. Who the hell didn't prioritise #JC4PM?

 "'Not newsworthy' is obviously not a scientific term. It's purely subjective. And it's also plain wrong" Checking for irony, checking for irony, not finding any irony, losing the will to live.

 "The #JC4PM tour was drawn up in the same spirit as the rallies that were organised by local activists during Jeremy Corbyn's leadership campaign. It was spontaneous." You mean the rallies that were nationally organised and co-ordinated as part of his Labour Leadership campaign

" There is a fantastic range of talented people who will perform or speak for Jeremy, including Charlotte Church, Michael Rosen, Brian Eno, Ken Loach, Billy Bragg, Mark Steel, Jeremy Hardy, Francesca Martinez, Mark Serwotka, Shappi Khorsandi, Arthur Smith, Patrick Monahan, Janey Godley" Charlotte Church (only in the news this decade for being gobby about austerity), Michael Rosen (who), Brian Eno (Ono and Bono's brother possibly), Ken Loach (who founded his own hard-left political party for goodness sake), Billy Bragg (left-wing campaigner for longer than I've been alive), Mark Steel (last seen being banned from voting for Labour leader for supporting the Greens), I'm seeing a pattern, Jeremy Hardy, Francesca . . . . . . Godley (No I don't know who these people are either.)

 "I can tell you that many of these names would do nothing for Labour before Jeremy Corbyn was leader." Oh, no. "However, now more celebrities are backing Jeremy Corbyn because he represents hope." Nobody cares, and yet you so obviously think they do or will or should.

"Why aren't we being told that Jeremy Corbyn has support from across entertainment and culture and that these talented people are prepared to put their reputation on the line for the Labour leader?" Hmmm, yes, I wonder why?
"The answer to these questions seems to be that many in the media don't want to report a story about how leading musicians, poets, film-makers and comedians support Jeremy Corbyn."
Genius. The media isn't reporting that Corbyn has support from third rate left-wing entertainers because they don't want to report that Corbyn has support from third rate left-wing entertainers. Unbelievably insightful, powerful analysis. Just to repeat from earlier.
"'Not newsworthy' is obviously not a scientific term. It's purely subjective. And it's also plain wrong" Razor-sharp analysis, absolutely razor-sharp.

 "They want Jeremy Corbyn to look like a loner who has little support, or only the support of people that the media have already demonized – those mysterious “loony lefties” who aren’t talented and successful celebrities." You're right, as long as I thought Corbyn was only supported by "loony lefties" I didn't agree with him. But now he's supported by "talented and successful celebrities" I'll abandon my long-held convictions about politics, national security and the economy. After all, I always vote for whoever Arthur Smith tells me to because I have no mind of my own.

"The response has taken me by surprise. I have had 7,000 hits " Cool story bro! And I've had 40,000 hits on this very blog for an article about how many Elves there are in Lord of the Rings. Maybe the Independent will give me a regular column.

 Instead of writing all that I could really have just looked at the sub-title "the dominant media narrative says that affluent, successful celebrities wouldn't support Corbyn". The patronising, pompous, delusion just seeps from every word. No, the media narrative has never mentioned what C list celebs think about Corbyn because nobody gives a toss what they think about politics and they never, ever, ever will.

You'd hope Labour would learn after losing the election was followed by the first disastrous four months of Corbyn's 'leadership'. If they have any sense at all they will run a mile from this man. Here we have the same delusion that said people voted Tory and UKIP because Labour wasn't left-wing enough, concentrated into weapons-grade stupid and converted into prose. I haven't seen this much political delusion in one place since Ed Miliband thought gaining Russel Brand's support was crucial to winning the Election. It really is mind boggling.

The Phrase 'Feminist Hero' is used too often these days. . . But not for Veena Malik!!!

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And can I get an AMEN!!


In fact, not just that.  Can we get Veena Malik a Bafta, an Oscar or  

just jump straight to Sainthood.

I just hope it doesn't cost her. . . .   

It is incredibly sad that I have to say that and it be a genuine fear.  But with recent events in Pakistan it is all too possible.

A fantastically brave and courageous woman.   
 
Her utter refusal to be cowed by open bullying (and implicit violent threats) is an inspiration for human decency and tolerance.  
 
God Bless and protect her.  It gives me hope for Pakistan and humanity generally.

An Open Letter to the Guardian Letter Writers of 15th September and other anti-Pope visiting schmucks.

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Dear Guardian-letter-signing, so-called, 'public intellectuals'
(and other pain-in-the-ass commentatorswho have expressed or agree with the same arguments),

The Pope's visit has brought out some of the dumbest public and political commentary I have heard for a while. Particularly from yourselves. I'd hoped with the election gone we'd be spared this level of stupid for a while, but no. Though, to be honest, the debate on public spending was already keeping the choo-choo train of opinionated ignorance firmly on the tracks.

You would actually have managed to be more coherent if you just stated you don't approve of the Pope coming to Britain, and simply do not want him to come and process through the streets to cheering crowds. That would at least have been consistent. Of course the response would have been that it was ridiculously arrogant of you to assume anyone cares whether a handful of self-appointed busybodies want him to come, and he wasn't coming to see you anyway.

You could even have said you disagreed with some official positions of the Catholic Church but saw this as a chance to open a rational dialogue and have greater public discussion of issues that are of central importance to mankind. But that would have required an adult disposition and a genuine desire for discussion and understanding, rather than childish name-calling, and that sounds like hard work, doesn't it.

However, sadly, thanks to your faux-liberal commitment you felt unable to state what is pretty obviously actually your wish, and instead claimed you were happy for him to come but merely had a few procedural problems with the form of his visit. Unfortunately these problems are total nonsense, and so you just made yourselves look dumber than otherwise, in an attempt to appear like you were expressing something more generally relevant than your own personal dislike of Catholicism.

Arguing that a generally recognised political state is not a state, just because it is momentarily politically inconvenient for you, is pretty moronic. I personally don't like the fact that Communist China is considered a state, and I wouldn't like the fact that the Soviet Union was considered a state, if it was not that collapsed when I was three years old. Before the Iraq War I was deeply irritated by people arguing that Saddam Hussein's government's held any legitimacy at all, since it was a genocidal, undemocratic, neo-Nazi tyranny. I consider all these regimes to be violent, murderous and entirely lacking in any democratic and popular legitimacy.

However, in none of these cases do my personal preferences affect, one jot, the plain facts of the world. One can only be astonished at the arrogance of a few figures (I'm looking at you Stephen Fry) who have apparently suddenly become experts in International law and early 20th Century Italian History. It is incredible you seem to think the global weight of governments, civil servants, legal scholars and peoples should bow  before your inane and often inaccurate trivia and re-assemble Inter-nationally recognised political facts and realities for your convenience.

The next most ridiculous thing has been the suddenly discovered outrage about waste in public spending, namely the £10 million cost for the Pope's visit. We spend 2/3 of that policing the Notting Hill carnival for God's sake, let alone football matches up and down the country. Not to mention the billions we waste each year on public bureaucracy, spin, pet projects, subsidies for opera and goodness knows what else. Indeed, a whole list of things of considerably less use and public interest than a chance to engage with the spiritual leader of 1/6th of the world's population, the largest popular organisation in the world, and around 2 million people in the UK at the moment. Living in a democracy means that your money gets spent on things you don't agree with, or wouldn't bother spending it on yourselves: Tough. If people don't like it they are free to leave the country, or perhaps blame Gordon Brown since he invited the Pope on a State Visit in the first place.

And let us not forget the sheer hypocrisy of making such a fuss about the Pope coming but not batting an eyelid about, say, the President of China, the King of Saudi Arabia, the President of Ghana, the President of Russia, the King of Jordan, the former President of South Africa, the President of China again a couple of times, the President of Israel. All of whom head regimes that actually officially engage in violent, human rights abuses. One can only get the impression this is more to do with the Pope's religion, and some persons' bigotry towards it (or that he represents one at all) rather than the moral record of the state he leads.

Because God forbid you actually try to open up a dialogue or engage in some adult and rational debate and discussion, instead of just ranting and raving and name-calling like children throwing a temper tantrum. But that wouldn't allow you to feel so self-righteous. Referring to him as "Pope Ratzinger" in your letter is particularly weak. I'd have thought that deliberately getting someone's name wrong to show disrespect was a childish affectation that would have been abandoned in secondary school. If you are actually that ignorant then it's 'Pope Benedict' or even 'Joseph Ratzinger', something that 30 seconds (its called Google) would have sufficed to discover, even if you'd never heard of the Pope before.

Which brings me to my last point. Even if you can not respect the Pope's positions on many of these issues, then you should be able to respect the importance he has, in part, in carrying the hopes and representing the beliefs of millions of good, honest, kind, thoughtful and decent people in this country and a billion more around the globe. But in too many of you this criticism is a poorly disguised front for sheer anti-Catholic bigotry, that comes out into the open in the de-humanising and hate-filled language employed on too many other occasions. Sometimes reaching the insane culmination of blaming Joseph Ratzinger personally for Aids, every individual act of child abuse and the devastation of the planet through over-population, among other paranoid ravings.

In summary, you're all idiots. Rarely has a part of my own country's 'cultural elite' made me want to reach so thoroughly and quickly for the sick bucket. You provide yet further proof of the wisdom of democracy: that no matter how well qualified, publicly acclaimed, or usually charming (looking at you again Mr Fry) a person may be, they are still prone to bouts of being an utter moron. How very egalitarian of you. Please stop embarrassing yourselves and your country. It's tiring.

Yours Sincerely,
Stephen Wigmore

Pop-Keynesianism

Now there's a phrase I never thought I'd write.
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One of the more remarkable phenomena of the discussion around the budget has been the emergence of, what can only be called, Pop-Keynesianism among the left-wing media.  Now there's a phrase I never thought I would ever say.  The financial crisis in general was widely reported to have brought about a resurgence of interest in and influence of Keynesian policies.  At least nominal adherence to keynesianism was the principle mark of economical policy-making from the 2nd World War until the end of the 1970's.  Now, Keynes was a genius, and one of the very few most important figures in the history of economics.  His great insight was to argue that governments could have role to support economic activity by borrowing and spending in times of recession to boost the economy, by boosting general demand, and thus easing the effects of recession and supporting growth by combating the generally deflationary spiral of recessions.  But too often, though, keynesianism was used as merely an ideological cover for ever higher state spending, and this, among other things led to its discrediting as a driver for policy in the neo-liberal reforms of the 1980's.  With the coming of the recession, though, we have experienced a supposed revival of keynesianism, as governments turned to fiscal stimulus to combat the effects of recession.

More recently still, the banner of Keynesianism has been seized by those opposing the austerity plans of the Coalition and the Conservatives particularly.  In a way it is good to see debate on public policy being supported by appeal to scientific principles, rather than vague emotion as is far too common.  However, recently this has reached the stage of the ridiculous.  Indeed, there was a period shortly following the budget, when, for a few weeks, the Independent and Guardian seemed to be running a rent-a-keynesian contest to see if between them they could manage to have at least one commentator a day accusing the Coalition of forgetting the lessons of Keynes and reverting to what was variously called pre-keynesian barbarism, a reversion to the economics of the 1930's, and various other mindless insults.  All with the intention of insinuating that the fiscal hawks were seemingly just naively unaware of the great Keynes' achievements, the poor, simple dears, and were certainly going to tip us back into economic Armageddon.  Suddenly, every half-baked leftist political commentator was an economics major (for example).

But the credibility of these new experts as invaluable fonts of economic theory would be considerably greater were it not for two niggling issues.  The first problem is the repeated claim, by a number of smug commentators, about the madness and ignorance of seeking to enact savage cuts whilst in a recession.  This criticism, if true, would be pretty decisive. But it has just one small problem, which hopefully you can spot:  we are not actually in recession.  For me, personally, the ability to totally miss this basic fact about our economy shakes my faith in their pronouncements on policy.  No one has suggested cutting during a recession, and not only are we not in a recession (and have not been for 9 months), but these commentators have equally seemed to miss the fact that the coalition's plans for balancing the budget are not all coming into effect now.  They represent the plan for the next 5 years, and, the fiscal tightening does not begin in earnest for another year, at which point we will have not been in recession for 21 months.  One of the more irritating episodes of this problem came with the initial announcement of £6 billion of cuts by Osbourne and Laws.  The papers were full of commentators quoting economists to the effect that what was necessary was a gentle start to any deficit reduction plan, seemingly oblivious to the fact that this is exactly what £6 billion is; whether you call it 6 out of £160 billion, 4% of the deficit, 6 out of £700 billion of public spending, or a 0.8% cut in public spending, this is a gradual start.  These people seem to suffer from a lack of awareness of economics and history and what Keynes was actually dealing with.  In the 1930's he was arguing against an economic approach of seeking to balance the budget during a recession, while the economy was still shrinking.  For someone to refer to a plan to balance a country's budget 5 years after a recession ends as "a return to pre-Keynesian history" suggest an ignorance of economics and history.

The second major hit to their credibility as Keynesians is the fact that pretty much to a man these are the same commentators who loudly demanded ever increasing public spending in the years leading up to the crisis, even though the government was running a deficit of around £30 billion before disaster struck, in direct contradiction to actual Keynesian theory.  Keynes sought to use governmental fiscal policy to smooth out the business cycle, by running a surplus in the good times, and thus cooling demand and the emergence of bubbles, so governments could afford to run a deficit in bad times, in order to help support growth and recovery.  He did not just advocate the idea that never-ending deficit spending on its own was a magical solution to all economics problems.  These commentators supported higher public spending and deficits in the good economic times and the bad economic times.  There seems to be literally no economic circumstance that they believe would not be helped by a healthy dose of central government spending more money and running a deficit.  The fact that these people do not seem to understand what keynesianism actually is, while being quite happy to act as its advocates, is the reason for labelling this Pop-Keynesianism.  What it really is, is a convenient scientific fig-leaf for their real aim, ever higher and more unsustainable public spending.  An ideological colour donned now it is convenient and presumably to be abandoned when it no longer is.  If these people were real Keynesians then they would argue for maintaining public spending for now while outlining their belief and awareness that once the economy has recovered public spending must be restrained and a budgetary surplus run to avoid us getting into this situation again.  Needless to say, they do not do this.    

If these people were real Keynesians then they would have supported the Conservative economic proposals at the 2005 election.  The Conservatives proposed £35 billion a year less public spending than Labour over the period of 2005-2010.  This smaller increase in public spending was shamefully labelled a plan for cuts, and widely shouted down in the media.  This figure is coincidentally just higher than the deficit labour ran until the recession.  Assuming the Conservatives would have followed a similar tax policy to Labour they would have run a near balanced budget, meaning that when the recession came we would have entered it with more than £100 billion less debt, having not artificially inflated the debt bubble further through government stimulus over the last few years, and with considerably more room to manoeuvre to stimulate the economy during the actual crisis.  Not to mention the fact that when the bubble popped that would have been £35 billion less cuts we now have to make.  In retrospect, it is clear that the Michael Howard's spending policy in 2005 was correct and Labour's was wrong, and all the media commentators who slammed the Conservatives were wrong too.