Thursday 27 March 2014

Have Politicians Ever Been More Vile?

Via Snowdon, there is a marvellous piece at the Telegraph today by Peter Oborne which is a must-read. It's all good, but this passage is especially pertinent.
Politicians of Right and Left have been transfixed by these anti-smoking campaigns. Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, has shown hardly any appetite to challenge the conventional wisdom of his own department, while Luciana Berger, the shadow health minister, is a breathless proselytiser for the anti-smoking lobby. No mainstream politician has dared to challenge the consensus, and only Rothmans-puffing Nigel Farage of Ukip really gets the point. 
I believe something is changing in Britain. George Osborne’s Budget, with its tax cut for beer and bingo and permission for people to take charge of their own savings, has caught a wider mood of national rebellion against bossy government. I noticed that when Question Time debated smoking in cars a few weeks ago the biggest round of applause was against the anti-smokers. 
This new politics of personal maturity is a problem for Ed Miliband. As Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin show in their important new study of Ukip, Labour has abandoned that sector of the population which used to be known as the working class. Mr Miliband’s Labour instead is in danger of becoming the party of the public-sector workers, the health and safety experts, the Brussels bureaucrats, the quangos and the wider political directorate.
We jewel robbers have known this for quite some time, but as if paid a few cream buns to confirm Oborne's morning article, up pops Diane Abbott on the Daily Politics at lunchtime to ram the point home. Scroll to 1:20 in on the video below for an astonishingly disdainful performance.


Has there ever been a more stark exhibition of 'bossy government' than that?
"One of the reasons why the {pause, smug grin} the Tories have been so reluctant to introduce plain packaging is {even smugger grin} wha' I call Lynton Crosby politics. {in contemptuous caricatured cockney accent} A penny off a pint, a penny off beer, and you can have your fags as well."
Have you ever seen or heard anything so contemptuous of the public a politician is supposed to be serving? We "can have" our fags as well? We are only allowed what politicians say we are now?

And what of the contempt for reducing tax on a pint of beer? This is a British politician sneering at the temerity of the government to drop tax by a tiny amount; disgusted that any politician could contemplate making the noose less tight around the public's neck!

And, having delivered this self-absorbed display of disgusting snobbery, she sat back - satisfied after having chided her class for daring to make working class life that little bit more tolerable - and her haughty, self-satisfied face spoke volumes.


Now, on the plus side, her arrogant, insulting performance will undoubtedly have swayed hundreds if not thousands to distrust the plain packs lobby. But, on the other, it's very sad that the British are not the kind of people to demand the repulsive bitch's head on a spike.

Oborne's Telegraph piece is titled:
There’s a quiet rebellion under way against bossy government
The rebellion won't be quiet for long if Abbott's Marie Antoinette-esque attitude becomes more widespread.

Sir Cyril Chantler's review of plain packaging is due to report by Monday. If it sides with monstrous arseholes like Abbott instead of the public - who provide her wages, remember, and who have overwhelmingly rejected the idea - it will be a watershed moment in showing how politicians despise and deride every single one of us.


16 comments:

SteveW said...

More than happy to chip in for piano wire and I don't mind a bit of grunt work afterwards. ..
Possibly the most inept performance I've ever seen from a politician.

Peem Birrell said...

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/467265/Vile-have-respect-Diane-Abbott-in-Twitter-storm-after-tweeting-at-Tony-Benn-s-funeral



Vile indeed and thick as a brick...

Smoking Hot said...

It will also be a watershed moment in something else 'if it sides' as you say. Will we hear, or indeed see, any sort of rebellion? ... the media? politicians? What l'm pretty sure you won't see much of, if any, is a reference to 427,888 who 'voted' against this plain packaging crap. You may however just get a reference to the 'votes' which supported pp ... 238,101. We will see on Mon ... or before if the result suits it to be leaked. :)

Tony said...

Abbott is bloody awful, such a sanctimonious chump. The worse kind of politician in among a sea of worthless bastards.

Jax said...

As an ambassador for black women in politics, Abbot makes me cringe. She displays all the worst elements of both groups. Unreasonably demanding and inflexible like the worst representatives of the ethnic minority groups (certainly not representative of those groups in general, I must stress), and displaying the revoltingly self-satisfied, bossy and know-it-all characteristics of the worst type of woman (again, highly unrepresentative of women in general).
And, just to get really personal, she could do with taking up the smokes herself – might help her to shed all those pounds that she seems to have piled on since I last saw her on TV. I wonder where she stands on the anti-obesity bandwagon? I’ll bet that, like most anti-smoker hypocrites she’s remarkably quiet on that one …

Ivan_Denisovich said...

Abbott combines arrogance, ambition and utter stupidity in a manner that befits the party that she represents. It claims to represent the working class but in fact represents the talentless idlers who waste their hard earned taxes.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

For someone with a health portfolio, it's incredible how very ill-informed she is.

Frank J said...

To my surprise, I, actually, felt embarrassed for her. What a loon! Nothing more can be said about it.


One day (and hopefully soon) these people are going to be seriously questioned about the so called 'evidence' related to smoking. You can feel it bubbling up. Then we'll all see antis in their true light, vicious, nasty and desperate. Stroll on.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Interesting you should mention leaks. There was a leak of sorts in the comments under Oborne's piece.

PH: 'The biggest winner is organised crime'...actually there's a report out tomorrow that says that smoking bans reduce childhood asthma attacks and premature births...so I'd say that's a big win."



Hmmm. It's a common theme of these comments sections that if anyone argues for freedom of choice toward smoking, they are accused of being paid to write the post by the tobacco industry. Yet here we have someone clearly in the pay of public health posting messages to dilute the a pro-choice article. I wonder how many others on there were written after an anti-smoker group call to action? ;)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

This is increasingly true of Labour in general. They seem to pander more to the Islington set than the Salford barrow boy.

Ivan_Denisovich said...

Agreed. I rarely comment on party politics but the link between the Labour party and public health Marxism is now so evident that I made an exception. Both my grandfathers worked in coal mines, one above and one below ground but I have nothing in common with the Islington set or the Labour party "socialists" who seek to control and dominate the lives of others lives for "their own good" .

John Gray said...

I have never liked Diane Abbott since the day she first opened her mouth in parliament to deliver her maiden speech. She was, of course, much slimmer then and had a Stevie Wonder inspired hair-do (all plaits) as in The Secret Life of Plants. This woman didn't just have a chip on her shoulder, but a whole yule log, and although and unlike many free-choice posters, I pretty heartily detested Margaret Thatcher myself, Abbott's speech was unnecessarily nasty and aggressive.


Abbott is not a good representative for women or the black community, I agree, and nor is she a good representative for the political class and overweight people either. She has become increasingly arrogant and, as a result, stupid to the point of being an imbecilic buffoon. If anybody truly deserves to be publicly humiliated this idiot does. Sadly, she is still given airspace in the media which is not a positive reflection on the people who permit her that privilege.


Yes, it is all very well, taking a knock at the politicians, but the key questions are: where do they come from and who puts them where they are? The answers are that they come from us (the general public) and we permit them to be where they are. For me, that is always the most sobering realisation.

Lisabelle said...

Vitriolically Vile!

loony libertarian watcher said...

I would have to drink 300 pints to get a free pint. And the pro smoking lobby is just a front for the big tobacco companies masquerading as the fight for freedom. Typical libertarian teenage dummy chucking. Tossers

Dragonmum said...

I've only just seen this - can't think how I missed it - and my relief is so great!
I thought I was the only person who truly detested Diane Abbott. she's really ruined the Andrew Neill show for me, imagine preferring to listen to Michael Portillo. Her only weapon is to shout down and talk over everyone on the panel - which wouldn't be so bad if she had anything intelligent to say. Thank you all for sharing!

Kira said...

I had the same feeling!
Also what's this all about tax cut on beer and bingo.
I love both of it, can't say anything against a good game of bingo on http://www.greatbritishbingo.co.uk. Actually I read some articles that they make it look like there are tax cuts but actually there are none but there are even hidden tax elevations!