By Ben Pensant

Dear ladies. Dear, dear ladies.

I know what you’re thinking: Who is this impeccably mannered progressive? Why does he use such big words? And what the bloomin’ hell is an open letter?

All good questions, sisters, but nothing to worry your pretty heads about. (Though for the record: 1. It’s me! 2. I use them because I’m clever 3. An open letter is a quaint custom popularised by The Guardian as a platform for fuck-witted comedians to hold intellectual dick-waving contests with the two blokes out of Creepshow.)

Because now the dust has settled it’s time to let your metaphorical cool auntie take over. That your little dalliance with independence didn’t work out is nothing to be ashamed of: when uneducated women think for themselves bad shit happens. It’s a fact of life. No-one blames you for it and it’s not worth fretting over. Seriously, we got this.

And frankly you have enough on your Jade Goodie commemorative plates at the minute, what with watching The Jeremy Kyle Experience, shoplifting from Aldi and braying the shite out of your multi-coloured feral children. Life is grimmer than ever for working-class women, though mercifully not half as grim as that endured by news readers and Hollywood actresses, forced to survive on a few hundred grand a year while their male counterparts rake in twice as much just because they were born without a working fanny.

But your lot has suddenly become just as difficult, especially those of you lucky enough to have crawled out from under the weight of Turkey Twizzlers to find gainful employment looking pretty and flashing your tits. I’ve no doubt you watched in dismay as your jobs vanished overnight, bringing joy to middle-class feminists who spend their lives railing against self-hating women for having the temerity to work where the hell they like.

So on behalf of those middle-class feminists, their middle-class allies and the middle-class media I’d like to say to the grid girls, walk-on tarts and yo-yo-knickered toastmistresses whose sudden unemployment was celebrated far and wide: Thank you. Sincerely.

Because words can’t express how grateful we are that you let your livelihoods and human rights take a hit in the name of social progress. And as anyone who’s spent more than five minutes on Twitter knows all too well, there is no social progress more important than putting a stop to women doing jobs that liberals disapprove of.

Which us why we owe a huge debt to you sweet, simple women for risking your mortgages and Ella subscriptions to bring happiness to strangers who know as much about your jobs as I do about knitting wooly hats shaped like piss-flaps.

And let’s face it, the feminists who’ve spent the last fortnight crapping all over your freedom of choice aren’t likely to suffer for the cause. They’re far too important to risk their own incomes, much like journalists with privately educated children who campaign enthusiastically for unlimited immigration, safe in the knowledge it won’t affect their kids’ class sizes.

No, it would be a national catastrophe if bourgeois leftists started losing their jobs, which is why you working-class women need to step up so we don’t have to. It’s almost like an intersectional updating of Thatcherism, only decent and virtuous instead of callous and evil.

So while working-class communities felt the pain in the ’80s as jobs were lost and services slashed under the guise of saving the economy, in 2018 attractive young women are thrown under the bus to placate middle-aged Gender Studies professors still angry that no-one wants to fuck them.

And that’s what separates us contemporary progressives from the likes of Maggie. While her policies were brutal solutions to actual problems, we spend our lives solving problems that don’t exist. While she cruelly removed miners from a physically draining, highly dangerous work environment, we freed you from the tyranny of air-conditioned clubs and sun-drenched race-tracks. And while she smeared working-class trade unionists as ‘the enemy within’, we spent the last fortnight comparing you to chimney-sweeps, prostitutes and ‘shit-shovellers’.

And as many have pointed out, the benefit to the next generation of vulnerable women will be enormous, surpassing even the huge societal changes that occurred when slavery was abolished. It may not feel like it now as you turn on the telly and are informed by well-off activists that your redundancy is for the greater good, but one day you’ll realise that by ending the barbaric practice of women waving score cards you played a pivotal role in stamping out an injustice every bit as abhorrent as buying and selling human beings. Trust me: your unemployment will be worth every red letter if it hastens an era-defining turning point that will change society not one iota.

And you brave, selfless, kebab-munching women are at the centre of the whole revolution. I’m almost jealous I don’t have my own job to lose in the name of equality. Almost.

Thankfully, you’ll have no trouble finding new work. I know this because it’s been endlessly repeated by the same people who never shut up about mass unemployment, the gig economy and the horror of GPs forced to sleep in bins behind food banks, arguing with pigeons and sucking off tramps for Big Macs.

And thanks to the hysterical feminist wing of the Labour Party, you’ll soon be able to pursue that childhood dream of becoming a fork-lift driver too. Or at the very least get a job on a checkout in Tesco that pays the same. Granted, neither will give you the satisfaction of earning money doing something you enjoy, nor will they offer the same wages you pulled in being a snooker hooker or baring your arse at Brands Snatch. But as you know, societal change trumps happiness and job security any day of the week.

In the meantime be grateful that as well as privileged journalists, privileged politicians have your back too, not least Harriet Harwoman and Emily Thornbirds, who recently took to TV and social media to attack a supermarket chain for paying two different rates for two different jobs. The fucking cunts.

In response to the brilliant news that Tesco are facing a £4billion lawsuit for paying warehouse staff more than check-out girls, Harriet took to Twitter to channel her inner Emily Pancake and rail against inequality:

“Women £8 per hour at Tesco. Men £11. The equal pay uprising continues. #tescowomen #bbcwomen. Pay inequality can not survive exposure“. Indeed it can’t, and neither could her passionate and downright untrue tweet judging by the subsequent torrent of abuse she received from Tory trolls.

Predictably, they engaged in lame whataboutery by pointing out that she was comparing pay rates for two completely different jobs, as if such dangerous logic has ever had the slightest impact on those whose entire existence depends on the gender pay gap narrative.

Others brought up the fact that neither position is gender specific, with male and female employees already working in both departments. Unsurprisingly, the bullies provided not one shred of evidence to back up this claim, preferring to coast on their privilege by offering the lame ‘proof’ of lived experience and visiting supermarkets. Cowards.

Luckily, the chances of Harperson and Lady Nugget doing their own shopping or setting foot in a warehouse are about as likely as Dianne Abbot winning Countdown. Which made their eagerness to exploit an environment they know sod all about even more impressive. It’s refreshing to know Labour MPs are so in touch with modern gender roles they believe only women sit behind kiosks and only men drive fork trucks.

Fork trucks which women are more than welcome to learn to drive if they fancy working nightshifts for an extra 3 quid an hour. The fact that most women would rather scan sweets and stack shelves is utterly unimportant, which explains why Harriet and Dangleberry wisely ignored such inconvenient facts and clung to the trusty meme that women are being paid less than men for doing the same work and it has to stop NOW.

Because what these right-wing loons refuse to grasp is the concept of equal value. The two jobs may require entirely different skills but only a bigot would argue one has more value than the other, as any nurse or firefighter on a third of an MP’s salary would no doubt agree.

Happily, with the court action kicking into gear there are surely happier times ahead for those oppressed ladies forced to labour for a pittance. I look forward to Tesco informing their checkout girls that as their job is now of equal value to the warehouse staff they are contractually obliged to alternate between standing behind the tab counter one week and getting up at 4am to drag heavy pallets around a cold depot the next. I can’t see that widening the gender pay gap one iota.

Neither will the potential knock-on effect of more men applying for check-out jobs now that they pay an extra 20-odd quid a shift. Because any idiot can see this will be offset by the huge amount of women who will go the other way, free at last to fulfil their destiny of loading crates of baked beans onto wagons while freezing their twats off. Fingers crossed the trend spreads and ballsy women start taking over other traditionally male dominated fields such as crab fishing, sewage control, waste collection and high-rise window cleaning. (Though it’s important we tackle gross inequality in the boardroom first. Paris wasn’t built in a day, sisters.)

But I know what you’re thinking: What if it doesn’t happen due to the patriarchy or something? What if our misogynist society fights tooth and nail to scupper this long overdue revolution? What if the only noticeable effect on the pay gap is that it gets bigger because greedy men start taking all the well-paid check-out jobs? Well, my answer to all three questions is the same: Hallelujah!

Because the last thing modern feminists want is for the gender pay gap to disappear and give them one less thing to cry about; the fact that on a like-for-like basis the gap barely exists at all is hard enough to deal with. No, it’s vital that the collective suffering of women in the most tolerant liberal democracy on the planet continues for at least another century.

In the meantime, working-class women, just keep doing the dirty jobs so Oxford graduates don’t have to, sacrificing your independence in the name of ideology and remembering your place in the hierarchy before embarking on offensive careers that middle-class feminists know bugger all about but have decided are problematic anyway.

With a bit of luck a few thousand more of you will lose your jobs before the year’s out. Because every war needs casualties and we couldn’t ask for a better gaggle of grunts to lay down their lives on the intersectional frontline.

Thank you for your service.

By Ben Pensant

From inventing a racism epidemic by pretending hate crime reports are the same as convictions to demanding heads roll because a researcher claims an MP once leered at her while she ate a Pepperami, modern progressives love nothing more than taking a huge shit on due process. Luckily, while our legal system stubbornly refuses to imprison people just because Twitter tells them to, the rest of us have marched on towards a bright future in which the power to determine guilt rests with hysterical leftists rather than coffin-dodging judges.

But there’s still work to be done. Because while reports of hate crime have risen, prosecutions have dropped. Nightmare. Predictably, Tory trolls argued this proved the spike was due to lily-livered liberals contacting the police because they overheard a schoolboy call his mate queer, when any idiot knows it’s clearly because racist cops refuse to take hatred seriously. Despite the fact that they’ve gone out of their way to re-define everything from Nigel Farage tweets to knock-knock jokes as violent assaults on par with a knife in the cheek.

So it’s left to us to act as judge and jury. (And executioner if needed. Just sayin’.) Sadly, some still don’t get it. So for every brave Labour MP who reacts to being accused of an unspecified crime by doing the decent thing and hanging himself, there are millions of privileged white males rubbing their victims’ noses in it, whining about their ‘right’ to a fair trial. And few are as privileged as four-eyed kiddy-fiddler Woody Allen.

For 25 years sick Allen has avoided prison just because there is virtually no evidence to back up the claim that he molested his 7-year-old daughter. Indeed, anyone with an hour to spare can easily find a wealth of information supporting the misogynist theory that Mia Farrow made the whole thing up. Needless to say, these heinous sources should be avoided like a plague of Blairites.

As those familiar with the narrative know, the only articles you need to read are those written by Ronan Farrow, the only legal mind whose opinion is worth a dime is Frank S. Maco, and the only victim you should ever believe is Dylan Farrow. Exposing yourself to anything that contradicts the ‘Woody Is A Paedo’ meme is highly dangerous. Luckily, few of us do. Indeed, most of social media is convinced that in 1992, while visiting the home of the woman he had just acrimoniously split up with, Allen suddenly decided to throw caution to the wind and drag his daughter upstairs to sexually assault her. In full view of several children, nannies and people who hated him.

But it’s not just the Mary Whitehouse mob who are determined to see a man they know nothing about spend his remaining years presumed guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable. Brilliantly, a raft of movie stars and Moira Sorvino have put their careers on the line and vowed never to work with Allen. Even the ones who already have.

Several steely journalists joined in too, gleefully sticking two fingers up at the same libel law they lauded when it cost Katie Hopkirk 25 grand for getting one non-binary gobshite mixed up with another. And while searching for Woody-related articles telling me what I wanted to hear I stumbled upon an extraordinary piece in the most unlikely place: evil Murdoch rag The Sun. Yes, really.

I was initially devastated to see something this full of love in a paper literally bursting with hate. But last month’s column by Lorraine Kelly was so downright virtuous it could’ve been from The New European. ‘If Woody Allen Wasn’t Film Royalty Sex Abuse Claims From His Daughter Would Have Ruined His Career’, screamed the subheading, slyly ignoring the fact that if Mia Farrow wasn’t film royalty no-one would have given her story the time of day.

But the article’s refusal to engage with the considerable evidence casting doubt on its entire premise earmarked Lorraine as one to watch. If she keeps it up she may even earn herself a job at The Canary come the Jezolution, just as soon as she’s finished five years of hard labour plus weekly lashes for sucking Murdoch’s cock. (Though more columns like this and her sentence may be reduced to 18 months and the odd gang-rape.)

Diving straight in, she did what most people convinced of Allen’s depravity do and presented the fact that he was never charged as proof that he should have been: ‘Allen was investigated back then but although the prosecutor declared there was “probable cause” he was never charged with anything’ she wrote, sidestepping the awkward question of why someone strongly suspected of child abuse wouldn’t be tried for it.

Thankfully the prosecutor (Frank S.Maco), covered this in 1993 when he stated he didn’t want to put Dylan through a trial. A compassionate and highly illogical claim but one that ends all discussion instantly. Because when it comes to Maco, that ‘probable cause’ line is all you need. In fact, other than doing what Lorraine did and casually quoting him without a shred of context you should avoid reading about or mentioning him at all.

Because some light research could reveal he earned a ‘stern rebuke’ from an ethics panel for making the ‘probable cause’ statement. Or that years later he modified it to ‘arguable probable cause’. Or that his reluctance to put Dylan through questioning only arose after she’d already endured months of interviews and evaluations approved by him and Mia. The same Mia who had already filmed the child for several days explaining exactly how her father had assaulted her. Is it any wonder Maco deduced the last thing she should do is give another interview to put away the monster responsible?

It’s called ‘putting the needs of the victim first’, people. But to listen to Allen’s lackies you’d think Maco realised if he went to trial his case would be exposed as having more holes than an M. Night Shalamar script. They laughably claim he only delivered his ‘probable cause’ parting shot to titilate the ‘no smoke without fire’ mob after bottling a trial he was nailed on to lose. Paranoid much?

Thankfully that same mob are all over social media, confidently asserting Allen’s guilt despite knowing as much about the case as I do about animal husbandry. And Lorraine has bought into this subculture with gusto, even citing a second legal expert as proof that the abuse took place:

‘A judge also declared Allen’s behaviour towards Dylan “grossly inappropriate” and that “measures must be taken” to protect her’. He certainly did. Not the judge at the child abuse trial, mind. That would be impossible as there was no child abuse trial. But as demonstrated by the way The Guardian shoehorn phrases like ‘alt-right’ into every single piece about professor of misogyny Jordan B. Henderson, if you mention two unrelated things in the same breath often enough they stick like glue. Likewise every social media thread about Allen is ram-packed with people who think the judge at his trial believed the director’s relationship with Dylan was ‘grossly inappropriate’ but decided to let him off anyway.

And with that it becomes part of the narrative, much like Professor Jordan’s alt-rightism, despite the fact that he couldn’t be less alt-right if he had Obama’s face tattooed on his chest. That the judge quoted by Lorraine only presided over the couple’s custody hearing is irrelevant, as is the fact that he never read the notes from the two child services investigations which concluded no abuse took place. His description of Allen’s ‘inappropriate behaviour’ meanwhile, referred to the director’s shortcomings as a parent rather than a penchant for child abuse. And his judgement that ‘steps must be taken to protect Dylan’ was seemingly informed not by concrete evidence against Allen but Mia’s unverified version of events.

All of which Lorraine expertly ignored: ‘I’m amazed anyone could hear themselves over the sound of those alarm bells ringing’ she raged, alarm bells which she neglects to mention were rung after police, doctors and social workers agreed there was no evidence any abuse had happened.

Which only emphasises how loud those bells were. Because two individuals – one who decided not to prosecute Allen and one with little knowledge of the case – are clearly more reliable than the various professionals who carried out extensive investigations. Or the other children, nannies and friends of Mia’s who were present that day and provided zero evidence that when no-one was looking Allen dragged Dylan upstairs and molested her.

Though the biggest alarm of all was Allen’s ‘sordid’ relationship with his wife. As Loraine put it: ‘Let’s not forget, Woody’s relationship with Farrow ended when she discovered explicit photos of 21-year-old Soon Yi, another of their adopted daughters, and realised Allen was having an affair with her’. Game, set and match as they say at Lord’s.

The fact that Soon Yi was actually Andre Previn’s daughter, was never adopted by Allen nor lived under the same roof, and according to Mia herself was ignored by Woody while growing up was wisely omitted. As was the fact that the affair didn’t begin until Soon Yi was 20. Because as we know, cheating on someone and being attracted to younger women is stone cold proof of rampant noncery.

Loraine also swerved the fact that Woody and Soon Yi have been married for 21 years and have two children, no doubt terrified of the backlash she’d receive from the Zionist lobby if she’d dared ask why New York child services allowed a paedophile to adopt a pair of vulnerable babies. It couldn’t possibly be because Soon Yi and her kids’ entire existence contradicts the popular belief that she is merely another of Allen’s victims.

Indeed the image of Soon Yi chained up in Allen’s basement and beaten regularly by her depraved stepfather is one that endures no matter how often she smiles in public: the brainwashed girl and her retarded kids, wheeled out to make their captor look respectable. He even forced her to go to university and learn several languages to maintain the illusion that she’s a perfectly normal, intelligent woman. Sick.

As is the fact that no-one other than Dylan has ever accused Allen of abuse. You think that sinister lobby I mentioned earlier would allow news of multiple allegations to get out? Dream on. Next you’ll be telling me it’s highly unlikely that a child-molester would choose that particular day to pop his paedo-cherry. As if it isn’t blatantly obvious that all the other memories of abuse were erased by one of those flashy torch things Tommy Lee Smith uses in Independence Day.

No, Allen’s unchecked power is what enabled his evil life of Riley. ‘I can’t think of anyone whose career wouldn’t have been destroyed by revelations that he’d cheated on his partner with her adopted daughter’. Me neither. And I’m also struggling to think of anyone other than a Hollywood actress whose wafer-thin story would have been easily believed by so many people.

But Lorraine had even more evidence for those too privileged to accept the truth: ‘It’s very telling that Allen’s biological son Ronan cut ties with his father’. Almost as telling as Mia’s adopted son Moses cutting ties with his mother and claiming she physically and mentally abused him. But Lorraine would rather not think about him. Because as the saying goes, believe victims. Just, y’know, believe some more than others.

So while Dylan’s tale of one implausible incident corroborated by no-one is treated as incontestable truth, Moses’s allegations – supported by witnesses – are dismissed out of hand. In fact, he’s been so thoroughly airbrushed from the story that most people don’t even know he exists. (That flashy torch thing hasn’t half been getting a hammering.)

He truly is The Boy Who Must Not Be Mentioned. And despite being the oldest child present that fateful day and repeatedly stating that no assault could have taken place he is Not To Be Believed either. No, the only siblings worth listening too are Dylan and Ronan.

Ronan, of course, is the handsome, blue-eyed reporter who was coincidentally conceived during a period when Mia admits she was still sleeping with Frank Sinatra, whom she claims she ‘never really split up’ with. Commendably, while Lorraine refers to Allen’s two-year affair as ‘selfish’ and ‘reprehensible’ she has nothing to say about Mia’s, which spanned a couple of decades. Which makes sense: if you’re going to assign diabolical motives to a man in his fifties dating a 20-year-old it’s best not to remind yourself that the woman you’re championing married a man in his fifties when she was a 20-year-old.

But Mia’s greatest gift is her cognitive dissonance, a badge of honour on the modern left. Indeed, Lorraine even praised Mia’s wonky, contradictory behaviour when paying tribute to those brave stars who vowed never to appear in Allen’s films again. (Despite the fact that there is as much – or rather, as little – evidence against the director now than there was when they all worked with him.)

‘I sincerely hope they will also stop lionising child rapist Roman Polanski, who shamefully fled the US and cowered in Europe instead of going to jail’ she wrote, cleverly forgetting that the person who has lionised Polanski most is Mia Farrow, who remained friends with the pervy Pole long after he pleaded guilty to drugging and raping a 13-year-old, even appearing as a character witness for him during a 2005 libel trial.

Of course, the fact that Polanski confessed to drugging and raping a 13-year-old is what sets him apart from liars like Allen, who shamefully protested his innocence rather than admit he’d made a daft mistake. Indeed, if Allen had only spilt the beans then gone on the run he could have spent the rest of his career receiving standing ovations from leading tinseltown feminists like Whoopie Goldblum and Dame Meryl Streep.

Mia, of course, cleverly capitalised on her friendship with Polanski recently by contacting his now middle-aged victim Samantha Geimer and apologising via social media. Clearly this selfless public gesture was all about solidarity and not at all a transparently cynical attempt to silence the critics pondering how someone whose child was sexually assaulted by a film director could spend decades supporting a film director who sexually assaulted a child.

A question which should be avoided at all costs. And it’s a measure of the internet left’s integrity that I’ve not came across one social media liberal outraged that The Sun would publish such speculative, misleading and downright false information in an attempt to smear an innocent man.

No, progressives are too busy raging against the Murdoch press for printing demonstrably true stories about 38-year-olds impersonating children or pointing out that the ubiquity of Muslim grooming gangs might just indicate the Muslim community has a problem with grooming gangs. Because any fool can see these are far worse than suggesting someone is a child abuser simply because three people say so.

And any gutless sycophant who dares suggest Allen’s guilt may not be as clear-cut as we thought is to be derided and disbelieved at all costs. Indeed, TV producer Bob Weide has written numerous pieces brimming with basic but largely unknown facts about the case, and as a result is commonly regarded as a dangerous loon.

Unsurprisingly, Weide worked on Curb My Enthusiasm starring unfunny Islamophobe Jerry David. Y’know, the other neurotic, four-eyed Zio with a penchant for younger women. Hmm, just how did a race notorious for drinking the blood of babies produce so many men who prey on vulnerable children? I wonder. Anyone unsure why Allen got away with his crimes for so long need only read up on the relentless smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn.

What you should categorically NOT read up on is anything even remotely doubting that Woody Allen is a paedophile. In fact, once you’ve read this you should borrow that flashy memory torch and erase it immediately. Then set your laptop on fire. Anything to avoid learning that everything you believe about a man whose only crime was to have an affair is about as convincing as Ewen Farrell’s mockney accent in Allen’s creepy incest drama Cassandra & Rodney.

Because that really would be a crime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

Let’s talk about the white man. He can’t help himself can he? Coasting through life, paying for nothing, shoving his wealth in minority faces like a privileged peacock flaunting its voluminous plumage in front of a one-legged pigeon covered in sticky Tizer. But as if that wasn’t problematic enough, he now thinks he has the Allah-given right to debase social media by cracking the kind of misogynist jokes even Roy ‘Fatty’ Brown would reject for being ‘a bit fookin’ sexist, that’.

Indeed, you’d struggle to find a creature as selfish, violent and downright offensive in all seven volumes of JK Roland’s Fascistic Bastards And Where To Punch Them. And hot on the heels of Tory toff Toby Jones’ exposure as the type of beast who uses phrases like ‘penis breath’ on the internet, along comes yet another Caucasian male elevated to a position of power despite having said some naughty stuff on Twitter.

But at least we can give Toby one tiny crumb of credit: he should have known better. As an Oxford graduate he is clearly educated enough to realise how plain wrong it was to make silly comments about The Full Monty director Katie Boyle’s tits. And he will be acutely aware that penning columns expressing unpopular opinions about wheelchair ramps would one day be used against him by members of the Purity Police who’d never actually read them.

Toby’s crime was not that he didn’t realise he’d offended all decent people but that he didn’t care. A shameless contrarian, his sin was to reject the left-wing values found in every Oxford-educated actor, Labour MP or Guardian journalist who’s ever lived off a trust fund while campaigning passionately for the many not the few.

None of which can be said about white males further down the social ladder who, denied the breeding and education squandered by Toby, have no idea there is anything wrong with making jokes about how big a female backbencher’s wobblers are. Let’s face it, explaining the misogyny of Toby’s dark Twitter past to the average working-class man is like trying to pin diarrhoea to a wall: we’re talking about a creature whose idea of Doing Better is to promise his teenage wife he’ll only rape her once a week.

And as anyone who’s read the terrifying tweets sent by former Man City striker Gary Neville knows all too well, there is no nest of working-class vipers more poisonous than the world of soccer. For readers who wisely avoid a sport watched and played by racist sex-pests who can’t read, Neville was recently handed the job of managing the Great Britain ladies’ team. As tends to happen, before he had time to lace up his boots someone had unearthed a horrific ‘quip’ he made online in 2011, the content of which is not for the faint-hearted: (Readers of a nervous Mary Whitehouse disposition may want to skip the next paragraph in case they get so outraged they shit their legs off.)

“When I said morning men I thought the women would of been busy preparing breakfast/getting kids ready/making the beds – sorry morning women!”

Sickening. So sickening that on first reading I was that sickened I didn’t even notice the poor grammar and punctuation. Or that it scans about as smoothly as a Richy Wire lyric about the link between Stalinism and housework sung backwards by a tramp. But Neville wasn’t finished, verbally assaulting his own sister Tracey the same year after she admonished the tight-arsed millionaire for forcing her to go halfers on a meal:

“U women of always wanted equality until it comes to paying the bills #hypocrites”

Jesus. I dread to think what kind of bullying this poor girl was subjected to while growing up with such an animal. And doubtless the regular beatings she received from Neville and his younger brother Neville left the kind of mental scars white males like Neville and Neville have been inflicting on innocent victims like Neville since time immortal.

Needless to say, Neville pulled the Get Out Of Jail Free card beloved of supremacists everywhere and claimed his vile, poorly worded tweets were ‘jokes’. Yes, Gary, much like Harvey Weinstein was just having a laugh when he forced women to watch him wank off into plant-pots and Hitler was merely pulling the legs of the six million Jews he sent to gas chambers. (Right after he went mad and invented Zionism, obvs.)

And his defence that he was ‘only joking’ is particularly unconvincing when you realise he once targeted the mother of his children too:

“Relax I’m back chilled – just battered the wife!!! Feel better now!”

Wow. Well done, Gary. In one tweet you contrived to alert the world to your secret life as a domestic abuser AND pen a one-liner ten times less amusing than Die Hard star Mel Gibson telling his ex-wife she deserved to get ‘raped by a pack of niggers’.

But even worse, in a grim example of the psychological hold violent white men have over their victims, Neville’s brainwashed wife Judy leapt to his defence with surely the worst case of Stackhouse Syndrome since Patty Smith was kidnapped by the Michigan Militia. Calling her brutal captor ‘a wonderful husband and father’ she said she ‘could not be prouder’ of him, the dark combination of crippling fear and internalised misogyny clearly blinding the poor woman to her husband’s evil.

I’ve no doubt Neville stood over his tearful wife as she wrote those hollow words, handful of hair in one fist and a tyre iron in the other. There’s no other explanation for such irrational behaviour. Unless you’re one of her hubby’s legion of alt-right apologists who think Julia might just know her partner of twenty years considerably better than a hysterical mob of Mary Whitehouse devotees who hadn’t heard of him a week ago.

Thankfully, those mobsters were out on force on social media, demanding Neville be sacked with a level of passion and principle not seen since the last time they demanded someone be sacked for saying something they didn’t like. And they were commendably backed up by important figures from women’s soccer, some of whom’s names the pitchfork-wielders even knew.

Because being involved with, having an interest in, or even knowing the slightest thing about the subject you’re outraged by is of no interest to the permanently offended. You think the middle-class liberals celebrating the World Darts Federation’s decision to stop using walk-on girls would be seen dead watching overweight lager louts throw arrows at a wall while half-naked women wearing paper crowns feed them Silk Cuts and Scampi Fries? No chance. But we’ll happily go out of our way to try and stop it if there are virtue points on the table.

Similarly, you can’t simply say that Gary Neville lacks the neccessary experience to be an international manager. No, you have to say he’s totally unsuitable due to being a rampant misogynist. And you can’t just say that you believe a female football team should have a female manager. No, you have to claim the decision is part of a widespread conspiracy to keep women in their place by overloooking them in favour of a hateful chauvinist who thinks it’s funny to rob and beat up female relatives.

Because the smug satisfaction of knowing someone has been punished for wrongspeak is the modern left’s bread and butter. And the people actually affected by our principled hounding campaigns? Utterly irrelevant; any idiot knows the feelings of a handful of social media curtain-twitchers are far more important.

Feelings which were trampled all over by FIFA, who yesterday confirmed that Neville would remain as Team GB manager despite our best efforts to have him banished from public life forever. Hmm, I wonder what tipped the balance for this milky-skinned, Y chromosome millionaire? It’s a mystery…

Meanwhile, people who would have a heart attack if they spent five minutes in a football stadium have to live with knowing that terrified women are spending their days on muddy fields being rugby tackled by a wife-beating brute with Bernard Manning’s joke-book stuffed down his shorts.

Needless to say, Neville called the job ‘the ultimate’. I can’t for the life of me think why a sexist oaf would say such a thing about a role that involves mansplaining and hanging out in women’s changing rooms. Another mystery…

But there’s no mystery as to what drives Neville to walk this earth doing and saying whatever he likes: his penis and pigmentation are all the evidence you need. And once again, the legacy of colonialism has handed an open goal to yet another white man who takes what he wants without a second thought for those less privileged. Back of the net, as they say at Lord’s.

Still, at least once St Jezza re-takes this godforsaken country we’ll mercifully see the back of such entitled behaviour. It’s not like the modern Labour Party would ever give a woman’s role to a misogynist, is it?

 

 

By Ben Pensant

Are there any depths this godforsaken government won’t sink to? Not content with squatting in Prime Minster Corbyn’s living room, awarding generous backhanders to failed construction giant Marillion, and forcing Britain to exit the EU just because more people voted Leave than Remain, they’ve now opted to insult peaceful Muslims everywhere by appointing an ‘anti-extremism tsar’. Just as hate crime soars to epidemic levels. Priceless.

But even worse, Theresa May has decided not to give the job to a principled representative of the Islamic faith like Ashgar Bukakke or Cherie Blair’s mam, but instead award it to self-hating Islamophobe Sarah Khan. That’s right, they’ve not only created an entire bureau dedicated to persecuting Muslims they’ve also decided it should be run by that gobby wife off Loose Women.

They’re just trolling us now, aren’t they?

Because that’s the only possible explanation for this ludicrous decision. Which comes barely a fortnight since Cathy Newperson demonstrated what a real female role model looks like, by defeating alt-right bully Kevin B. Peterson with the most glorious deployment of the straw-man argument since a Guardian reporter asked Winston Churchill after his ‘fight them on the beaches’ speech: ‘So what you’re saying is the next time we’re in Tenerife we should beat up the first lucky-lucky man who tries to sell us two Rolexes for a tenner?’

Predictably, Cathy was subjected to a torrent of misogynist abuse for daring to ignore virtually everything Peterson said, including threats so serious that Channel 5 refused to tell anyone what they were. Well played, righties. As if it wasn’t traumatic enough that a poor woman’s entire world view was destroyed by a crumpled academic who sounds like Kermit The Frog.

And did the government step in to do something about the bile directed at Cathy? Did they balls. These Tory titweasels would rather offer a cushy job to a daytime telly star who spends her afternoons slagging off her dopey husband than protect an intelligent Oxford graduate whose response to being called an arsehole on Twitter is to ring MI5.

But if you thought potato-faced sex-pest Tony Young was woefully underqualified to join a regulatory board no-one outside of Westminster gives two shits about, wait ’til you get a load of Sarah, otherwise known as ‘the right kind of Muslim’. Not a marginalised Muslim, or a radicalised Muslim, or any other kind of Muslim who refuses to sell out their faith in the name of integration. No, Sarah’s a moderate Muslim. Or as her estranged brother the Mayor Of London would say, an Uncle Tom.

Oh hang on, I forgot: she’s also in an Islamic girl-group called Inspire. I do apologise. Let’s all throw garlands at the feet of these little pop princesses for steering young Muslims away from extremism through the power of song. How nice of them to use inappropriate outfits and a name that sounds like a shit deodorant to coerce their brothers and sisters into bowing down to white supremacy. Sarah’s mother Chaka must be so proud.

Of course it will surprise no-one to learn that Sarah got her big break by winning The Candidate, a TV show invented by none other than Donald Trump. And I imagine he’s pleased as punch with her career, another subservient House Muslim to go with Maajid Johnson and Diane Hirsi Ali. But Sarah is arguably even more shameful than those two, exploiting the anodyne arena of daytime TV to spread her Islamophobic poison.

Not that I expect to find much in the way of social justice on Loose Women. Despite being a key member of their audience demographic due to spending most weekday afternoons sprawled on a settee, I wouldn’t lower myself to watch this disposable trash if you paid me. (Though I’d be willing to negotiate if that payment came in the form of coffee and warm blankets.)

But as I wrote in For Those About To Mock, my popular piece on the Lewis Smith scandal of October 2016, even television designed for idiots can occasionally hit the right notes. Which Mandy Dingle and Janet Street Preacher proved tenfold when they ambushed an Olympic athlete to blame him for the death threats he received after being caught on camera arsing about on a rug.

Sarah, however, has little time for such principled probing, preferring to abuse her platform to bang on about FGM. As if a child having her vagina mutilated is as remotely abhorrent as a young man at a wedding putting on a silly voice and pretending to pray.

Thankfully, Sarah’s appointment was met with horror by a principled coalition of Islamists and Islamist apologists – otherwise known as the Muslim Council Of Britain and the Labour Party. Indeed, it’s a measure of their decency that the same people who would accuse others of incitement for mentioning Islam and terrorism in the same sentence think nothing of publicly attacking a liberal Muslim and putting a huge target on her forehead.

And they were able backed by Baroness Warsaw, who chipped in to condemn the appointment as ‘deeply disturbing’. Baroness, you may recall, made a name for herself as a friend of Palestine and as a result is literally the only Tory who won’t be hung, drawn and quartered on Hyde Park when the Day Of Jezzajudgement arrives. (A year of scrubbing floors on the Thames floating gulag interspersed with weekly gang-rapes overseen by an assortment of Absolute Boys should be punishment enough.)

She also earned props for her objection to the despicable Prevent strategy, that foul initiative which unfairly targets Islamic terrorism as a major cause for concern simply because most terrorists are followers of Islam. Needless to say Sarah is a long time champion of Prevent, which explains her eagerness to combine moaning about cellulite on ITV with helping the most fascist government in UK history persecute her own people. Nice.

And now, thanks to the Tories going all-out to tighten their grip on this most marginalised of communities, she’ll be able to persecute them full-time. Well done, Mrs May. What next, Tommy Robertson appointed Minister For Diversity?

Give these bastards an inch and they don’t just take a mile, they force you to walk it wearing nothing but socks while throwing nettles at your bell-end. Still, much like Sarah’s hero Trump – who showed that being a racist reality star is no barrier whatsoever to pursuing a career in politics – fingers crossed Sarah’s fifteen minutes of fame will expose her deeply problematic views, alerting the world to the uncomfortable truth of this dangerous, contradictory character:

A Muslim who hates Muslims.

An extremist fighting extremism.

A scholar, CEO and human rights campaigner who spends her days off grassing up Muslims, getting her kit off in Bollywood scud movies and pimping out her bald husband on live television.

Would the real Sarah Khan please stand up?

BY BEN PENSANT.

In part one of a new series scouring the latest cinema releases for stuff to be outraged by, I cast my intersectional eye over 2018’s most problematic Oscar contender.

There’s so much wrong with Three Billboards Outside Epping Forest I don’t know where to begin. From offensive dialogue featuring more ‘fags’, ‘cunts’ and ‘niggers’ than a ‘Fatty’ Brown box-set to the fact that it’s a story about rape and murder written by a man who’s never been raped or murdered, its relentless assault on liberal values has rightly appalled Gender Studies graduates everywhere.

The movie draws first blood from the off and continues to punch down for two tortuous hours. In a damning indictment of the film’s repugnance, the deeply problematic opening features a woman in overalls bullying a ginger-nut while dropping C-bombs left, right and centre yet still manages to be one of the movie’s least offensive scenes.

Indeed, listening to every overwritten line of dialogue in Malcolm McDonald’s festival of filth is akin to being severely beaten by a chatty Trump supporter who insists on repeating every jackboot to the head in case your skull didn’t quite catch it first, second and third time.

But it’s not just the violent language that make Three Billiards the most politically incorrect film since 1992’s paean to police brutality The Boys In Black. (And at least Hollywood had the decency to re-make that dangerous piece of fascist propaganda twenty years later as a diverse summer blockbuster, replacing original stars Little & Large with Tommy Lee Smith as a sharp-suited two-headed alien.)

No, what really galls about McDonald’s movie is the arrogant way he assumes he has the freedom to not only write a racist cop but neglect to show the foul lawman being punished. Sure, Sam Roswell’s un-PC PC may get fired, beaten senseless, nearly burnt alive and forced to kiss a tortoise, but at no point do we see him being shamed on social media or battered with bike-chains by fearless anti-capitalists in £250 Burberry hoodies.

Indeed, when he is sacked halfway through it’s not because of his ugly views but because he throws someone out of a window, propagating the dangerous idea that punching a man several times and hurling him through a pane of glass is anywhere near as abhorrent as using the N-word.

But worse still, by the time the film mercifully ends we are expected to believe this bigot has become the good guy. That’s right, McDonald is so in thrall to white supremacy he demands his audience sympathise with a redneck piss-head who tortures black suspects and uses the word ‘midget’ to describe a midget.

That’s right, just because McDonald is a Trump supporter hiding in plain sight – surely sufficient grounds for a lifelong Hollywood ban? – he seems to think it entitles him to create a fictional character who isn’t a very nice person. Then has the nerve to suggest this not very nice fictional person might have become a marginally nicer fictional person, as if ignorance and prejudice can just be switched off and all it takes is a fictional woman’s invitation to help her murder a sex-pest and all will forgiven.

Which brings us to the film’s greatest sin: the ending. Or as it is now surely known in liberal circles, ‘The biggest fuck you to #MeToo since the Poundland rape-pixie forced its teabag-testes down a dead doll’s throat’. Because it didn’t just rankle due to the fact that it defied logic, stretched credibility and punished those of us who can’t hold a piss in beyond 90 minutes. No, far, far worse was the manipulative manner in which it offered the audience a glimmer of hope before trampling over our dreams with the most cruel twist since that big bat thing shot Tom Jones’ son at the end of The Fog.

Because just when we’ve been fooled into thinking Rockliffe’s character has earned his redemption and is about to disregard that archaic principle known as ‘due process’ by killing a man he believes is a rapist, the rug is viciously pulled as he changes his mind. Or rather, he and his accomplice meekly imply they probably won’t carry out the murder after all, limping to an ambiguous, open-ended and cravenly spineless climax. You’d almost think he made the film for intelligent adults rather than curtain-twitching pitchfork wielders.

But this is symptomatic of the way Hollywood is being slowly infected with the cancer of Trumpism, denying a leftist audience the warm glow of leaving a theatre believing there is one less white man in the world. Instead we are left speechless as McDonald recklessly promotes that most reactionary of concepts, ‘innocent until proven guilty’. That’s right, in 2018 a privileged white male is actually trying to say a man accused of sexual assault might not be guilty. Contemptible.

Sadly this has been coming for some time, with Trump’s sinister attempts to turn the movie industry into a fascist misinformation machine pre-dating both his presidency and his career in politics. Indeed, for an early warning sign one only has to recall Billy Bigelow’s love-letter to Islamophobia, Zero Dark Chocolate.

That Trump was pulling the creative strings on this ‘factual’ account of the extrajudicial killing of Saddam Hussein is blindingly obvious. From the hysterical script repeatedly accusing innocent Islamists of terrorism to star Bryce Dallas Campbell’s cultural appropriation of numerous ethnic headscarves, the movie is practically a recruiting video for the MAGNA crowd.

And don’t even get me started on the waterboarding scenes, laughably defended by Bigelow on the grounds that because the FBI used torture during the search for Saddam that makes it perfectly acceptable to show torture in a film about the search for Saddam. Pull the other one. A moderate Muslim on a flying horse can see Trump used the political weight he wouldn’t accrue for another four years to goad the director into kidnapping a brown actor and trying to drown him on camera for a laugh.

Luckily the tide is turning, with brave tinseltown liberals putting their necks on the line and selflessly taking a stand against an abusive culture they were only too happy to ignore when it was expedient to do so. Hence the official decree that any actress who refuses to stick two fingers up at the patriarchy by wearing a black dress to an awards bash is clearly suffering from internalised misogyny and deserves to have her vagina cut off by progressive theocrat Linda Sasquatch.

Indeed, one only has to read a random Twitter thread about shifty Zionist Woody Allen to see how brilliantly the ‘Believe Victims’ mantra has consumed not only the cream of Hollywood but the absolute best of social media. And much like their Hollywood counterparts who recently decided to boycott Allen even though there is no more evidence against him now than there was when they all worked with him, cognitive dissonance and an aversion to facts is vital.

Needless to say, the stand against Allen beautifully illustrates the modern left-wing belief that spending half an hour researching a subject before commenting on it should be avoided at all costs. Who wants to have their preconceived ideas about someone dismantled by inconvenient truths when it’s far more satisfying to believe a man raped his daughter because three members of a deeply dysfunctional family say so?

Unsurprisingly, cowardly voices in the movie industry are refusing to get on board. And lo and behold, as if the racism and rape apologism of Three Billabongs wasn’t sickening enough, it also features a supporting role for…Woody Allen. Unbelievable.

I suppose the one bit of credit we can give McDonald is that he wisely cuts short the former Taxi star’s role by having his character shoot his own face off. But until that happens in real life it will be little comfort to his many victims. And despite numerous gerrymandered Oscar nominations, insiders suggest the presence of Allen has all but guaranteed this grubby little movie will end the night empty-handed.

So having already steered his wife Francis to one undeserved Oscar win in 1987 with Argo, fingers crossed McDonald’s luck has run out. After last year’s ceremony recognised, celebrated and patronised the black community it would be a travesty if all that hard-fought tokenism was shat on by the academy choosing to honour a disgusting piece of alt-right propaganda.

Stick THAT on a billboard, Missouri.

 

 

By Ben Pensant

Every true liberal loves The Guardian. There’s been surveys and everything. Sure, the relationship between principled progressives and Britain’s favourite left-wing love-sheet has been somewhat rocky during the Corbyn years, and no-one has been more vociferous than me in demanding the paper’s subversive elements are dealt with in the strongest possible manner. (Or at the very least sent regular death threats on Twitter.)

But for every shameful column doubting Jezza’s brilliance or suggesting not all Leave voters are cross-eyed racists there’ll be another ten arguing for 100% inheritance tax or exposing the inherent racism of Thomas The Tank Engine. We may not always get along but when it’s right it’s very right and will be an important ally in Britain’s bright socialist future. Indeed, once Labour reclaim Number Ten it’ll take roughly the time needed to build a gulag and assemble a firing squad to condemn the G’s anti-Corbyn tendencies to the memory hole for good.

Sadly, it seems The Guardian as we know it may have slipped down that hole too. Because from tomorrow the paper will only be available in tabloid format. That’s right, the publication which for years prided itself on being a cut above the hate-filled red-tops will now have to face the embarrassment of being the same size of them. Which means progressives like me will be denied the smug satisfaction of opening a beach towel-sized broadsheet on the metro and pretending to read a riveting George Mondeo essay on the environmental benefits of bird-shit smoothies while covertly staring at the tits of the blue-haired feminist who gets on at Benton. (If you’re reading, sister, I’m the pale bloke with the beach towel-sized broadsheet who regularly pretends to read riveting George Mondeo essays while covertly staring at your tits. Fancy a bird-shit smoothy some time?)

All of which made my blood boil. Because as well as giving me one less way to fool strangers on public transport into thinking I’m more intelligent than them, the very real fear that a Bovril-slurping cretin who usually buys The Scum or The Daily Heil might accidentally pick up a copy made me ill. Not least because it will inevitably end up plastered over their broken living room window once they realise it contains neither Aldi coupons nor pictures of frail reality stars falling out of taxis with no knickers on. (Unless the G2 section happens to feature an interview with ironic Tory Tracey Emin.)

But as uncomfortable as I was with my beloved daily being read by white van drivers with tabs behind their ears and hate-crime on their minds, once I’d got over the shock I realised this could actually be a positive. Because the working-class – specifically the Brexit-voting variety – are notoriously stupid and gullible. Indeed, their capacity for believing any old shite is legendary, unlike those well-read, street-wise Remainers who a fortnight ago were convinced it costs £500 million to change the colour of a passport.

And while their stupidity should rightly bar them from voting in referendums or working at the BBC, it could also be a fantastic bonus. We already have a significant cross-section of stupid young people on board, most of whom went to good schools and know how to use knives and forks: imagine how easy it would be to mould the brains of stupid adults whose idea of a classy night in is a bottle of a Lambrini and an ounce of skag?

Perhaps making The Guardian accessible to the revolting specimens who clog up our decimated high streets gnawing on chicken bones is a smart move. Can you think of anyone more easy to indoctrinate with far-left ideology than the educationally sub-normal? And the benefit to society would be massive too, as brainwashing these impressionable goons in the ways of the left would keep them off the streets and stop them raping children. Or even better, stop them forcing innocent Muslim men to rape children.

Because as socialist firebrand Lee Jasper pointed out last week, the ‘Asian’ rape gangs would never have dreamed of abusing children if the white working-class hadn’t goaded them into it. As the northern native put it: ‘My own view is that we groomed Pakistani men into this aspect of working-class culture’ Hear hear. Because any idiot knows, Muslims are never responsible for anything they do, unless it’s something good like winning a bakery competition. To the likes of Jasper, Muslim men are pathetic, impressionable creatures so uniquely susceptible to raping teenage girls that all it takes is the existence of non-Muslim men raping teenage girls to turn them all into paedophiles.

‘Sexual violence and abuse remains rife in poor communities’ he warned, though clearly not in the poor communities where hundreds of Muslim men were found guilty of sexual violence and abuse. (And anyone who says otherwise is a racist Islamophobe like that ghastly Champion woman with the Dicky Davis hair.) The difference is that when poor white men are found guilty of raping teenage girls they rarely have excuses made for them by defiantly deluded leftists so out of touch even the Labour party won’t have him. And the reason, of course, is there are no excuses – it’s just what white people do. Especially the working-class ones.

Still, at least Jasper had the balls to acknowledge his own culpability – note the ‘we’ in his original statement. Not many failed politicians have the guts to admit they were one of the people who forced all those Muslim men to rape kids. Let’s hope he reports himself to the police before he does it again.

But the fact that Jasper was brought up surrounded by vermin yet forged a successful career as a political outcast shows just how easy it is to convert even the most moronic of proles. And with the right staff there’s no reason The Guardian can’t use their downsizing to help transform more of these ill-educated beasts into compliant leftists.

A useful move would be to utilise allies from the down-market end of left-wing media, such as Kevin Maguire of The Daily Mirror. Kev, of course, ticks all the right regressive boxes: terror apologist, die-hard Corbynite, pro-EU zealot, and one of the esteemed group of principled hypocrites who criticise people for sending their kids to private school despite sending their kids to private school.

Like many Guardian columnists and Labour ministers, Kev is also against grammar schools even though he went to one himself, demonstrating the sleek cognitive dissonance which these days all but guarantees a job at the G. Indeed, take away Kev’s pit-yacker accent and he’s basically Polly Toynbee with a smaller cock.

Polly, of course, geared up for the big Guardian re-brand by appearing on TV and spouting her usual hysterical propaganda, clearly dreaming of a lucrative future as the metropolitan Katie Hopkins so she can eventually afford that fifth home she’s always dreamed of. Her appearance on The Andrew Mars Breakfast Show a week ago was characterised by the same principled hypocrisy displayed by Kev, as she claimed evil boob-obsessive Toby Young only set up a free school so he could send his kids to it.

Predictably she was bullied by her fellow guest, Punch editor and Tory troll Lee Nelson, who pathetically pointed out this was better than sending his kids to a private school like she did. But Polly wasn’t going to play this charlatan’s game and responded to his comment in the manner we’d expect: by ignoring it. Indeed, the only time you’re guaranteed to see a Guardian writer obfuscate in such a brilliant manner is when someone brings up the paper’s equally evasive approach to paying tax.

Of course not all Guardianistas are as seasoned as Polly, and young bruisers like Abi Williamson and her big sister Owen Jones will have to get used to grappling with unsavoury chancers like Nelson now that they write for a shitty tabloid. Still, those two virtue-magnets can put their hands to anything and I fully believe in a few weeks we’ll have forgotten The Guardian was once a serious broadsheet and embraced its bright future as an out-of-touch caricature with as much moral authority as a six-hour opera about Myra Hindley’s love life.

It’s just a shame this didn’t happen two weeks ago as the Young scandal broke. Imagine what cheeky fun the G could have had splashing Toby’s leering, jacket potato features all over their front pages? They could have even updated the 1996 outrage over Blur’s ‘The Es And Whizz Don’t Work’ single by adding a simple rhyming twist to The Daily Star‘s classic ‘Ban This Sick Stunt!’ headline.

Still, with more battles to come there’ll be ample opportunity for self-righteous moral outrage. For now, there’s never been a better time for the left-wing media to forget subtlety, embrace populism and deploy every underhand tactic from phone hacking to journalists dressed as sheiks to promote liberal values and force as many people out of their jobs as possible.

In the meantime, I’m confident the list of suggestions I sent to Guardian editor Barbara Viner will be acted upon, despite the disrespectful lack of a reply. Fingers crossed we’ll soon be treated to Jeremy Corbyn’s weekly agony aunt column, Dear Leader. And with a bit of luck it won’t be long before we see the first transgender Page Three girl. In a burqa.

Phwoar!

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

I’m sure I wasn’t the only principled Corbynite who spent the Winterval Holiday dreading the new year. From the terrifying threat of Trump-incited nuclear war to the equally scary prospect of losing my state-sanctioned income unless St. Jezza seizes Number Ten sharpish, all the evidence suggested the next twelve months would be as traumatic as the last. Luckily, my fears were premature. Because in less than a week, 2018 has already been ram-packed with enough principled leftist behaviour to fill that shopping trolley Michael Moore takes to IHOP every morning.

We’ve seen anti-imperialists demonstrate their commitment to human rights by condemning Iranians for demanding human rights. Liberals who once believed Trump was so desperate to be President he colluded with Russia gleefully big-up a book which claims he didn’t want to win the election at all. And Owen Jones doing what he does best: having meltdowns on Twitter, demanding someone is sacked for saying something he doesn’t like and crying on Sky News about an issue no-one outside of social media gives two fucks about.

And boy, have OJ et al excelled themselves, going further than usual and demanding someone is sacked from a job they haven’t even started yet. The someone in question was of course Toby Young: self-confessed Tory, editor of right-wing rag Punch and an all round villain so evil he makes Kevin Spacey look like Keyser Soze.

His crime – or rather his most recent crime – was to accept a government job as one of 15 people on a board that regulates universities or something. The full details of this role are of course unimportant, which is why myself and everyone else spitting feathers about it didn’t bother finding them out. But one thing we do know is that one of his duties will be to monitor and uphold free speech, in itself is enough to set alarm bells ringing.

Because unless you’ve been living under a rock – or worse, in the north – you can’t have failed to notice the way a new generation of oppressed middle-class kids have spent the last few years bravely fighting the insidious trend of subjecting students to points of view they don’t like. Which explains the terrified establishment’s decision to employ a ghastly Conservative to stamp out this #resistance for good.

And be warned, in picking far-right Young their intention is clear: a huge middle finger to those of us who know fine well the only people who should ever be allowed to regulate anything are leftists. (There’s been studies and everything.) Thank god we’ll soon have a Labour government to enshrine this into British law.

A Labour government, I might add, with no need for the kind of rank nepotism practiced by the Tories. One only has to compare the behaviour of Young’s father with that of Corbyn and McDonnell to see the huge difference in class. While Toby senior famously used his reputation as inventor of the metric system to secure his shit-for-brains child a place at Cambridge, John and Jezza enrolled their sons in the university of life, gifting them tough jobs at Labour HQ which introduced them to the hard graft of writing tweets, answering phones and ironing Lady Thornberry’s fanny pads.

Similarly, while Theresa May hands Young a multi-million pound gig because he votes Tory and cleans her toilet, Corbyn has a more moral approach to rewarding his lap-dogs, demonstrated by his decision to offer a peerage to a ghoulish human rights lawyer for white-washing an investigation into anti-Semitism. And as for suitability: while Shami Chakrabbitslim’s experience as a barrister makes her eminently qualified to wear silly robes and hob-nob with rich people, Young seems to think he’s got the right to interfere with higher education just because he’s set up the odd school and served on a commission that helps poor kids get into university. He couldn’t be more of a campus outsider if he wore a shell-suit and read The Sun.

And the last people who should be regulating anything are outsiders. The fact that virtually every board or quango since the Year Blair has been stuffed with people who know bugger all about the thing they’re regulating is irrelevant: they tend to be good left-wing people so they get a pass. Young, on the other hand, is a bad right-wing person, totally unqualified for the role of giving colleges a free pass to churn out identity politics-obsessed Mary Whitehouse clones.

Thankfully social media is awash with such folk, especially politicians and journalists – the last people on earth to use family or friendship connections to get on in life. And they gleefully dug up recent examples of Young’s despicable views, such as his dislike for I, Daniel Bloke, the 2015 masterpiece from poverty-porn auteur Pat Loach. Many pointed out that, as an Oxford graduate, Young had no right to comment on a film about poor people, cleverly ignoring the fact that its director was an Oxford graduate too. But this was just the tip of the iceberg, because as the hysteria grew the perpetually offended somehow unearthed even worse examples of Young’s repugnance.

Chief among these were the claims that thirty years ago Young called working-class grammar school kids ‘stains’ and wrote a 2012 column which referred to disabled students as ‘functionally illiterate troglodytes’. This damning evidence was circulated all over the media by scores of brave liberals who had clearly never read the original articles, including Wigan Casino glass collector-turned-Corbynite cheerleader Paul Mason, who appeared to have gotten all of his information from a long-discredited 2015 hit-piece in former newspaper The Independent.

Several concerned leftists even started a petition calling for Young to be sacked, citing these two claims as proof of his wickedness. And never one to miss out on some moral outrage, Owen Jones chipped in with a predictably manic performance on Sky News in which he asserted three times that Young had called disabled students ‘troglodytes’.

Great work from everyone. But what made it even more sweet was the fact that Young never actually said either of those things. Indeed, as was obvious to anyone who took the time to find out what he had said, when he spoke of ‘stains’ he was talking about undergraduates in general, and the ‘functionally illiterate troglodyte with a mental age of six’ comment was an over-the-top example of where the state’s obsession with inclusivity might lead, exaggerated for comic effect despite not being particularly funny. Which is handy, as ‘funny’ is practically kryptonite to the modern left.

Not that that bothered the tens of thousands who signed the petition calling for Young to be fired. Nor did it concern Mason, who grabbed the opportunity to have a Twitter meltdown even more spectacular than that time he responded to a train being delayed with an epic rant in favour of nationalisation, blissfully unaware that the overhead lines which caused the delay are already nationalised. (He’s an economist, y’know.)

But despite the best efforts of The Purity Police, the campaign to shame Young barely registered, with most people on Twitter and practically everyone in the real world sharing the opinion that a gobby journalist being appointed to a board they couldn’t care less about was roughly ten times less important than some model getting her tits out on Celebrity Big Brother. Which as we were to learn, would have excited the breast-obsessed brute no end.

Because phase three was when the witch-hunt really kicked into gear, with even those unmoved by Young’s vile politics rightly appalled by his grim history of sexist jokes. And as all good liberals know, a sure-fire way to set off the pitchfork-wielders is to remind them of some comments someone once made about boobs. But they struck gold with the series of sick tweets Toby sent between 2009 and 2012. Because as well as boobs there are dicks, arses, knockers and tiddlers. Apparently one time he even called someone airhead.

Even worse, Young once offended LGBTQPRs everywhere with one of the worst anti-gay slurs imaginable. Indeed, in the dark history of homophobia there are few things more hurtful than calling someone ‘penis breath’. Though at least the whole sorry saga has brought home how foul this phrase is: few gay men will forget the devastating sight of Owen Jones spitting it out on Sky News as if he were coughing up a mouthful of Tory spunk. And I don’t know about you but I fear I’ll never again be able to watch ET without wincing at that evil little bigot, Gertie.

But the ugliest chapter of his three-year reign of titty-based terror was the foul tweet he sent paying tribute to film director Danny Cannon’s wife’s bosoms, little realising it was actually the Oscar winner’s DAUGHTER. Despite being blatantly obvious that Young hadn’t realised this – the clue being the fact that he used the word ‘wife’ – it was decided that as well as being a revolting Tory who hates disabled people and is obsessed with mammary glands he is also quite clearly a nonce. The idea of handing a middle-aged man who talks like a ten-year old delinquent the keys to the castle is beyond the pale. Give this animal a sniff of power and he’ll be spitting on the fire and drawing cocks on walls before you know it.

Still, fingers crossed the collective outrage is enough to force a U-turn, even if beyond Westminster, The Guardian and The Temperance League of Twitter no-one gives a shit about Young or his new job. Indeed, rumour has it in the world the only objection dumb Mail-readers had to Young using a vile phrase like ‘baps’ was that he didn’t choose a more downmarket term, such as ‘Bristols’ or ‘top bollocks’

Predictably, the Tory trolls piled in, determined to paint us as censorious, hysterical puritans for behaving like censorious, hysterical puritans. Some even went as far as ridiculously suggesting we were only upset with Young because he’s a Tory, conveniently ignoring the similarly frenzied paddy we threw in October when Clive Lewis offended middle-class curtain-twitchers everywhere by saying ‘on your knees, bitch!’.

But frankly, they’re not worth our time.  The modern left have done themselves proud once again, and the outrage of the last week should hold us in good stead for the battles to come. Indeed, point for point, Toby-gate has been a perfect example of the debating power of the regressive left.

Because you can’t just disagree with Young’s claim that wheelchair ramps are an example of PC gone mad. No, you have to cherry pick an unrelated line from the same article and say he hates disableds and thinks they’re troglodytes.

You can’t just argue against his hypothetical comments about who would most benefit from genetically engineered intelligence. No, you have to call him an evil eugenicist who wants to sterilise the poor and the stupid.

You can’t find out what he actually said about working-class students and ‘stains’ and criticise him for that. No, you have to take the word of agenda-drive activists like Paul Mason and an embarrassment of an online rag which has so little journalistic integrity it makes The Canary look like The Wall Street Journal.

And you can’t look at someone’s record of helping children and young adults of all backgrounds gain access to a good education. No, you have to focus on the fact that he’s made the odd laddish comment on the internet and decide that disqualifies him from doing a job which every sane person knows should only be available to members of the Labour Party. (Or Tories who know when to zip it.)

All in all, a textbook example of arguing your point when you don’t actually have one. And happily, as I write this news is filtering through that Young not only admitted to watching PORN he also once made a sick, unfunny and blatantly obvious joke about WANKING. Gotcha. You can run but you can’t hide, baldy.

But let’s not get too carried away. Believe it or not, there are things happening in other parts of the world far more serious than Toby Young getting a cushy job on a board. Because as we speak, brave people in a far-flung corner of the world are risking their lives to protest the way their oppressive regime has treated them.

These courageous rebels enjoy few of the luxuries we take for granted and deserve our solidarity as they fight tooth and nail in the name of liberal values. So I hereby call on all my followers to pledge support to their brothers and sister thousands of miles away who’ve spent the last week horrendously offended by this racist piece of shit:

Our thoughts are with you, comrades x

 

(Photo: Andrew Kneebone)

 

 

 

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By Ben Pensant.

Despite the beastliness of Brexit, the tyranny of Trump, and the way white people continued to destroy everything they touched, there was much to celebrate in 2017. From Katie Hopkins and Kelvin Mackenzie being fired for saying stuff Guardian-readers don’t like to Jezza and Labour wiping the floor with the Tories by losing another election to them, there was plenty of good news if you knew where to look for it.

Remember the excitement of watching marginalised Muslims retaliate to Islamophobic western foreign policy by mowing down pedestrians, blowing up teenagers and slashing the throats of booze-addled cockneys? Who could forget Larry Khan striking a blow for feminism by banning posters featuring women in bikinis from the Underground in case female commuters get so offended they start jumping in front of trains?

Marvellous memories but let’s not get carried away. Because as last week’s shocking Poundland scandal illustrated, there is currently a sharp divide between educated liberals outraged by the sight of two toys engaging in consensual sex-acts and ignorant bigots who couldn’t give two fucks. And despite the best efforts of Caroline Criado Whitehouse – journalist, activist and founder of Twitter’s Anti-Sex League – it appears the latter group are growing, emboldened by patriarchy, imperialism and having a sense of humour.

Predictably, right-wing social media defended Poundland’s hateful decision to promote Twinings Tea with a toy elf dangling its perforated plums over an unconscious woman as ‘banter’, that vile phenomenon popular with rape apologists. Cue principled outrage from middle-class journalists who had led such sheltered lives they’d never heard of ‘tea-bagging’ but were awfully cross about it anyway.

Which was understandable having been forced to look at an advert attacking women, trivialising sexual assault and promoting female subservience. That it was actually a harmless pun on something consenting adults do every day was irrelevant, quirky sex-acts clearly not widely discussed in the boarding schools and elite universities where Britain’s left-wing media starlets were taught how to think.

Needless to say, the privately educated victims of Poundland’s misogyny were ignored, the chain store refusing to withdraw the picture. Indeed, this wasn’t their first foray into the world of sexism, having recently tweeted horrendous images featuring the pointy-eared brute doing everything from enjoying a threesome with two Barbie Dolls to sticking his plastic penis through a hole in a wall, a particularly vile act which would give even the most laid-back H&S officer nightmares.

So it was left to feminist Twitter to fight the good fight, vowing to boycott Twinings and Poundland until they removed the ‘tea-bagging’ image and repeatedly stating that because the female elf was lying on her back it clearly meant she’d been assaulted rather than simply being quite common among consenting adults when one is sucking the other one’s knackers. Y’know, tea-bagging. Or as Ms Criado Whitehouse calls it: rape.

For the uninitiated, Caroline is a feminist. And like many feminists, this privately educated CEO’s daughter loves to rail against white male privilege despite being more privileged than any white male I know. Unsurprisingly, she was at the forefront of the anti-Poundland crusade, almost having a nervous breakdown over the fact that a grubby discount store had the nerve to make a joke about a consensual sex-act without considering the feelings of an Oxford graduate with an OBE. Which she announced to her followers with a late contender for most hysterically middle-class tweet of the year:

‘I’m pretty faithful to Twinings English Breakfast but would change fast as hell if it turns out they think a puerile middle-finger up at women is an acceptable marketing strategy’. Bold stuff from a traumatised woman, clearly haunted by grotesque hallucinations in which the evil elf wasn’t merely dangling its balls above the unconscious women’s mouth it was also fingering her. But this wasn’t just about a sexist photo: it was about tarnishing Caroline’s favourite hot drink – and by extension her very soul – by selling it in a grubby shop for poor people. Indeed, if the teabags the elf was forcing into his victim’s mouth were Tetley’s she wouldn’t give two fucks.

Happily, Twinings responded by doing what regressives admire most: caving in to the mob and issuing a grovelling apology. Though as Caroline pointed out fifty-seven times, the damage was already done: ‘I’ve fucking had enough of sexual assault being played for laughs!’ she railed, stubbornly sticking to the wonky equation that engaging in a consensual sex act = sexual assault.

She then brilliantly silenced her detractors by pointing out that the woman on the floor was wearing a T-shirt with ‘brave’ written on it. While uneducated Leave voters wondered what this had to do with sexual assault, the rest if us knew straight away, even before Caroline clarified it for the pro-rape crowd:

‘The T-shirt she’s wearing positions this as a middle-finger at the #MeToo movement’. Gotcha. With no evidence whatsoever to back up her claim, Caroline exposed Poundland’s real intention: to undermine an anti-sexual assault campaign by releasing a daft picture of two toys doing something naughty that has got bugger all to do with sexual assault. It’s so obvious it hurts.

Having sent her opponents back to their basements, Caroline continued to lambast Poundland for their ‘transparent attempt at outrage marketing’, an attempt so transparent she spent all day being outraged about it. ‘Which makes it far worse than just straight up sexism’. Indeed, it was something far, far worse: consensual sex, a thorn in the side of misandrists like Caroline for years. Because the only thing worse than a woman having sexual relations with a man is a woman having sexual relations with a man because she wants to.

A position summed up by the angry woman so horrified by Poundland she reported them to the police. No word yet on how the investigation is coming along but fingers crossed she got through and wasn’t kept waiting while the operator dealt with something trivial like a robbery, a murder or an actual sexual assault.

Luckily, Caroline and her followers were ably supported by an assortment of male allies who know when to shut up, Do Better and show their solidarity with the sisterhood by sitting down when they go for a piss. Chief among these white knights was Times columnist Hugo Rifkind, who riled Caroline by making a sensible point – a sure-fire way to piss off a modern feminist – before getting back in her good books by spending the rest of the thread bowing, curtsying and apologising through his teeth to avoid the wrath of the Anti-Sex League Banshees.

‘Sorry. Wasn’t’ he replied after Caroline accused him of ‘eye-rolling at women getting rightly upset’. What Hugo had actually done was make the straightforward observation that middle-class media types boycotting Poundland was unlikely to affect their sales. But Caroline didn’t get where she is today by debating actual points when hysterical straw-man arguments do the job ten times better. Something Hugo was mindful of as the exchange progressed, his craven apologetics even earning a rare ‘sorry’ from Caroline for misreading his point. ‘Don’t be’ Hugo replied, his testicles retreating so fast he coughed up a mouthful of pubes: ‘I was being flip, maybe I shouldn’t be’.

He then apologised to a different woman, disheartened that her anger over a photo of two consenting toys being rude had been ‘discredited’ as moral outrage. ‘I’m honestly not sure anyone in this thread is doing that’ he pleaded, offering up what remained of his ball-sack as a blood sacrifice, ‘but I’m sorry if that’s how it looks’. Wise move. Because there’s nothing more guaranteed to melt regressive hearts quicker than apologising for how they feel.

Hugo then wisely decided to avoid any more misunderstanding, earning much-needed brownie points by doubling-down on how appalling the elf picture was: ‘If this was similarly racially or religiously offensive it would be illegal’ he pointed out, tapping in to the modern leftist desire to criminalise everything they don’t like. Though he wisely avoided explaining either what was offensive about the picture or what its racially or religiously offensive equivalents would be. If an elf getting tea-bagged promotes rape I daren’t even imagine the reaction to black and Jewish elves sharing a glass of Eggnog.

Thankfully, it seems at uni Hugo et al were far too busy reading books and being intellectual to watch porn or learn about a well-known sexual position that even Caroline’s idol Mary Whitehouse had probably heard of. (I hear her good friend Jimmy Savile kept her up to date with all the latest trends.) Which proved extremely useful when stubbornly pushing the narrative that a plastic toy pretending to pleasure another plastic toy was in fact not a cheeky pun on the term ‘tea-bagging’ but a cruel piece of propaganda designed to discredit victims of assault.

As Caroline put it: ‘I hate being used like this in such a horrendous way’ cleverly blaming Poundland for inciting her to spend a whole day making a fuss out of something she didn’t understand. ‘It’s mocking women fighting back against sexual assault. I feel dirty’ See what you did to this poor woman? Not only is she so traumatised she’s started imagining a photo of a toy lying on its back signifies rape, you’ve also forced her to spend all day thinking about it. Shameful.

Sadly, despite the support Caroline received there was a sting in the tail for The Purity Police, as it became disappointingly apparent that in The Real World the vast majority of people were firmly on Poundland’s side. Including women. Yes, that’s right, in 2017 there actually exists brain-damaged females who not only have the temerity to disagree with a double-barrelled socialite with letters after her name but also have such crippling internalised misogyny they aren’t outraged by a daft picture of an elf with its stots out. Terrifying.

Still, once Caroline realised that the vast majority of people couldn’t care less where a toy sticks its paper nuts, she went back to doing what she does best: whining about Brexit, covering up the legs on pianos and making hysterically bigoted comments about men that would have her screaming ‘hate crime!’ if someone said them about any other group.

Indeed, she gleefully switched her attention to the other big issue that only a handful of tearful pro-EU zealots give a shit about: blue passports. Getting stuck right in, she propagated the popular, evidence-free, frankly bizarre theory that changing their colour was a chief reason idiots voted Leave, before lamenting that exiting the EU will mean she will no longer be able to work and travel throughout Europe despite the fact that she quite literally will.

All of which seemed to get her regressive juices re-flowing after the dispiriting Poundland defeat, and it was great to see her take a break from the fight against toy-based misogyny to join her Remainer brethren in their latest bout of Brexit-based hysteria. I for one took huge pleasure in watching the same people who’ve spent 18 months telling Leave voters how gullible they are re-tweeting the illogical claim that it costs £500 million to change a passport from red to blue.

But despite that fleeting victory the war is far from over, with Caroline and the feminist resistance currently in retreat like the Rebel MCs at the end of the new Star Trek film. They’re sure to bounce back though and I’m in no doubt that Caroline is training her troops as we speak, prepping them for an all-out assault on the next cheap supermarket that thinks it’s funny to mock rape victims by making silly puns about sex-acts. Fingers crossed they’ve done their homework and know their rim-jobs from their bagpipes.

May the force be with them.

By Ben Pensant

Believe it or not, politics wasn’t my first love. Despite being more clued up than most, my road to becoming the voice of a generation was paved with other passions, most of which are perfectly legal. Chief among those was a love of the arts, in particular performance and literature. Indeed, without the escapist joy of reading and acting I dread to think what my life would have been like under the tyranny of abusive, alcoholic parents.

But while being locked in a damp cupboard under the stairs and forced to live on orange peel and live mice may have broken less precocious children, for me this typical working-class existence was to be my making. Because as well as a life-long hemorrhoid problem, my grim cellar days also gifted me the freedom to dream, to disappear, to spend my summer holidays ploughing through a pile of mouldy paperbacks, scrawling one-man plays in blood on the ceiling, and slicing my tongue to ribbons licking rusty dog food cans.

Still, despite exposing myself to as much culture as possible (in between chewing on burst tennis balls and attempting suicide with a plastic spoon), when I eventually escaped my cider-drenched parents at 16 I opted against pursuing the arts. Instead I retained my integrity by forging a successful career as a recipient of the welfare state, a vocation which still burns bright to this day. Though as it turned out, my natural flare for writing and acting proved vital when deflecting the Job Centre’s fascistic demands for evidence of my attempts to find work and numerous physical disabilities.

In many respects I owe everything to what that grim period gave me, not least the confidence to spend my adult life claiming more benefits than a one-eyed Islamist skag dealer with twelve children and a bad back. But I’ve also gone to great lengths to give something to the community while doing as little as possible and expecting everyone else to pay for it. Which in turn has brought pleasure to countless others, as demonstrated by those joyous afternoons critiquing EastEnders and Jackie Collins to comatose pensioners in the Black Bull, Benton. (I’ll be there from 1pm every day next week if anyone fancies saying ‘hi’ or buying me two pints and a Pepperami.)

All of which informed my exciting decision to start using this platform not just for political activism but also to re-ignite my passion for literature and drama by righting some of the wrongs that have occurred when seminal novels have been mangled for the screen. Utilising my in-depth knowledge, I aim to share this wisdom with my readers, many of whom have no idea how much better Jaws would have been if George Lucozade had cast Benny Hill in the lead role instead of Bill Cosby.

But this isn’t just about analysing poor adaptations. I could talk all day about what David Finchley got wrong when he adapted The Girl With The Pearl Earring but it’d be like shooting apples in a barrel. No, I plan to go deeper. Because often it’s the original texts themselves that are lacking. And similar to the pleasure I take in highlighting the racism of idiot Brexiters, I intend to use this new venture to show failed geniuses such as Seb Larson and F. Murray Fitzgerald exactly where they went wrong. And my goal couldn’t be simpler: to re-shape and re-imagine these fatally flawed pieces for a modern, progressive audience.

But I won’t be producing cheap re-makes or sequels. If you’re expecting Freddy The 13th, forget it. Because during my childhood held captive under the stairs one of the few things that kept me going was Radio 6, particularly long-running sex and sheep saga The Arthurs. Indeed, some of my fondest memories involve shivering in a vomit-stained blanket with my ear glued to the ancient transistor radio, praying I’d make it to the end of the episode before the battery died, I passed out from frostbite or my dad walked in and started kicking imaginary pigeons while leaving a trail of syrupy black piss on the floorboards.

In fact, the only artform that could possibly do justice to my vision is the radio play – a far more esoteric and evocative medium than cinema or TV. By re-creating key scenes from classic novels the correct way, at long last the layman can get a glimpse of what might have been if all of those highly paid screenwriters and directors had a tenth of my talents.

Which brings me to the first novel to be given my unique audio redux treatment: JRR Martin’s little known sci-fi epic, A Song Of Tits And Dragons.

As you’re probably aware, in 2015 this weighty tome was adapted into a cult TV series by HSBC, whereupon it was re-christened Game Of Throne to make the dark drama more palatable to Americans with shit for brains. Needless to say, the title wasn’t the only thing they changed. Because throughout its ten-year run GOT has taken huge liberties with its source material: altering names, locations and bra-sizes while repeatedly disrespecting Martin’s bold vision in order to sate the feral desires of hotdog-scoffing Trump voters from Michigan.

Not that I actually watch the show. I stopped after the pilot episode, sensing it would inevitably sell out as the brainless public latched on to its cynical blend of swords and fanny. Needless to say, I jumped ship immediately once I found out it was no longer only available from ultra-secret streaming services months before broadcast and could now be watched by any beer-swilling knacker with a Skynet subscription.

Because there’s no better way to scrub the elitist lustre from a piece of high quality drama than broadcasting it in the UK at the same time it airs in the states. What self-respecting TV connoisseur wants to watch something that brings joy to millions instead of a handful of snobs? Gone are the golden days of watching US TV months before everyone else and acting unbearably smug about your new favourite show that no fucker has heard of. Now, thanks to Robert Murdoch, Yoohoo and Kwikflix, most American shows are available immediately to everyone rather than just a small cabal of socially awkward web-savvy virgins.

Sadly, the mid-noughties joy of watching The Choir a year before anyone else is gone for good, and with it our fond memories of the show itself. Because as the western world descends into white supremacy the inherent wrongness of that much-lauded cop show – and others from the so-called ‘golden generation’ – is now painfully obvious. Take the irresponsible way it depicted black communities blighted by drugs and violence as a complex and difficult issue with no easy answers, completely at odds with the Black Lives Matter position which propagates the narrative that evil cops shoot innocent black men and force them to kill each other because of systemic something-or-other. And don’t even get me started on the crudely stereotyped Columbian meth-lords in Breaking Saul.

It’s thanks to this malaise that when it comes to GOT I stand firmly in the ‘not as good as the books’ camp. Not that I’ve read them. I stopped after chapter one as I got the distinct impression they were getting dangerously close to selling out. And by ‘selling out’ I mean it had shifted more than ten copies and expanded its audience to include people who wear shellsuits, eat kebabs and murder their own children.

So we parted ways, though I still fondly recall those halcyon days, in much the same way I’ll always cherish my memories of Nirvana’s early months: writing their logo all over my pencil-case, rocking out to their debut album Ten before it had even been recorded, and setting fire to it after finding out they’d played a gig to over twenty people at Southampton Roadmender’s. Marvellous times and while it was a wrench to withdraw my support after they took the corporate dollar, no-one was more pleased than me when Bert Cocaine clawed back some underground cred by sticking a rifle in his mouth and shooting his face off.

But despite bailing from GOT after one episode I’ll always feel an affinity with the TV series. (And I’d wager I know more about it than most of the people who’ve watched all eight seasons too.) All of which informed my thinking when debating which parts of Martin’s opus could be most improved by my idiosyncratic touch. Would I go for loveable pixie Taiwan Lancaster’s trip to Hadrian’s Wall with rugged hero Peter Snow? How about albino queen Linda Hamilton’s unsuccessful attempts to house-train her pet dinosaurs? Or maybe the dark chapter in which treacherous chimney sweep Alfie Lovejoy gets his knob bitten off by evil prince Michael Bolton?

When it came to promising chapters just crying out to be improved I was spoilt for choice. But in the end I went back to the early stuff (what else?), specifically the seminal sequence that laid the foundation for the entire story. Yes, I’m talking about the perilous trip from north to south enjoyed by King of Westworld Robert Baracus and his effeminate best friend Nev Stark.

 

This section had it all – drama, humour, and a poorly sketched relationship just dying to be electrified by someone who knows these characters better than the man who created them. And the modern-day parallels were simply too good to resist, from Robert’s boorish, bullying Brexiteer to Nev, the kind, gentle Corbynite. Who, much like Britain, could have saved himself a truckload of bother if only he’d ‘remained’ in Wintersville.

But most of all it was a chance to show what really went on between these two characters as they made that fateful journey west. Friends who’ve heard my piece have observed that it reveals an emotional core to Robert and Nev’s friendship that was sorely missing on page and screen. That’s not for me to say though they’re most definitely correct. I’ve also been told my version chimes beautifully with the intersectional world we now inhabit, easily dwarfing the casually offensive orignal in terms of its grasp of identity politics. No mean feat considering the only two characters are white men who’d stick their dicks in a bacon sandwich if it smiled at them.

To keep the fanboys happy I’ve retained the iconic them tune from the TV show, but other than that this is as original a story as can be written about two characters invented by someone else. You’ll also notice that the accents are somewhat different to the crass cod-Yorkshire found in the TV show. Needless to say, as sole voice actor I was determined to add some authentic northern grit, not least with Nev, whose pitch-perfect burr contrasts sharply with the lacklustre brogue used in the TV show by Sean Penn. I don’t mind admitting this is a direct result of my clever decision to imbue his accent with the laconic charm of Wigan Casino cleaner-cum-guerilla economist Paul Mason. I believe the results speak for themselves.

But enough from me. The time has come to disappear into a magical imaginary world filled with magic and imagination. (As well as rape, incest and child murder.) There’s a little town in the highlands where a brave man from the north is about to make a momentous decision that will echo through this life and the next…

 

(Recorded, edited and mixed by Don Eggnog)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Ben Pensant

‘Hi @TheresaMay, in case you hadn’t noticed, Donald Trump is promoting British Neo-Nazis, do you have anything to say whatsoever?’

This tweet was sent last month by Owen Jones, hours after Donald Trump had shocked the world by unexpectedly doing something idiotic on Twitter. Within 24 hours The Wicked Witch of Downing Street had released a statement condemning President Pussy-Grab, terrified that if she remained silent OJ might demand she comment on something equally earth-shattering, like a footballer’s wife eating a bowl of hippo bell-ends on live television.

But forget our useless PM, whose sole purpose is keeping Number Ten’s executive shit-house gleaming in anticipation of the day Jezza evicts her and her four-eyed hubby. (I’ll say one thing for Tory women, they may be evil but they’re bloody handy with a bog-brush.) No, this is about moral consistency and the way progressives like Owen have thrown it under the bus, along with equality, free speech, universal human rights and everything else they abandoned years ago.

Because it’s a measure of Owen’s self-awareness that he condemns Trump for promoting British Neo-Nazis despite spending two years cheerleading for a man with a history of promoting Palestinian Neo-Nazis. And this lax attitude to consistency is everywhere among modern liberals, especially on Twitter. Take spoof newsman Jonathan Pile, who used to treat all politicians with contempt and delight in skewering left and right. All that changed around election time when he became a one-man PR machine for Labour, adoringly re-tweeting Jezza’s every word and lauding him as the beret-clad messiah he obviously is.

Needless to say, Pile gleefully attacked Trump’s Britain First mishap, somewhat ironically considering in June the funnyman re-tweeted an anti-Semitic Corbynite fond of posting memes alleging the Jews planned 9/11 and faked the moon landings. Fortunately Jonathan did what all Jezzabels do when faced with such smears and ignored them. Because anyone who thinks the knuckle-dragging racists of Britain First are remotely comparable to a principled leftist who once said ‘a Zionist would rape his own mother for an inch of Palestine’ needs serious help.

As do the shameful right-wingnuts who recently turned on Gary Lineker for re-tweeting a cleverly-edited video depicting Israeli soldiers brutalising Palestinian children. In a brazen attempt to deflect from the damning footage, Zio troublemakers focused on the fact that Lineker was re-tweeting Ben White, an amiable progressive with a proud history of defending holocaust denial and violence against Jews. Yes, this is now considered a bad thing.

Luckily, liberal Twitter rallied around Gary, proving there are certain circumstances when it’s perfectly okay for a rich man off the telly to re-tweet a misleading video from a bigoted source. Indeed, the same people who call one rich man an evil racist will passionately support the other rich man provided it’s Israel being demonised and not Muslims.

As you’d expect, Lineker’s explanation was simple: he didn’t know who White was but it didn’t matter because the video was still ‘sickening’ regardless. Which is a valid explanation. Apart from when Trump uses it. Because in his case it wasn’t just the source that was offensive but the content. Which is why they were roundly described as ‘anti-Muslim’ videos: it wasn’t just Britain First who were racist but the footage itself. And as every progressive knows, even saying a Muslim has done something wrong is inherently Islamophobic: just look at the disturbing way the media spent the whole of 9/11 talking abut 9/11 when plenty of other newsworthy stuff was going on that day.

Thankfully, Owen Jones needed no such excuses when he publicised a MEND event in October as he knew plenty about the bigots he was re-tweeting. For despite Owen regularly condemning the far-right, there are times when enabling and supporting extremists isn’t just acceptable it’s vital. And if you don’t you’re a racist. Or worse, a ‘melt’.

Of course, the idea that not supporting the far-right implies racism can be confusing. But you need only look at the history of Britain’s next Prime Minister to join the dots. Because the Dear Leader’s sparkling career is practically a step-by-step guide to the nice parts of the far-right. Indeed, Corbyn was metaphorically re-tweeting the far-right when Trump was just a twinkle in a TV executive’s eye.

But now more than ever, with far-right Twitter accounts disappearing faster than George Galloway’s botox fund, it’s vital to remember who the good far-right guys are. (They’re easy to spot on social media: their names tend to be written in foreignish and they haven’t been banned yet.) And with more battles to come in 2018, we need our ideological weapons cocked and loaded at all times. So here, constant reader, is my Winterville gift, a rundown of the most popular far-right groups it’s okay to like:

Hamas.

Far-right anti-Semitic terrorists who carry out suicide bombings, fire rockets at civilians and have a charter calling for the genocide of Jews worldwide. Their political wing, while no less extreme, are less pro-actively stab-happy due to having their hands full counting money, imprisoning gays, threatening trade unionists and shooting protesters. Which, of course, they’re forced to do because of Israeli apartheid or something.

But their government has still boasted a wide range of eccentric Ministers, such as Adallah Darbu, who calls Jews a ‘foreign bacteria’, Marwen Abu Ras, who believes they are ‘behind every catastrophe on the face on the earth’, and Ahmad Bar, who thinks the best way to engage with Jews is to ‘kill them all, without leaving a single one’

All in all, they’re so far-right they make Britain First look like the Natural Law Party. But they’re also brown-skinned Muslims and enemies of Israel. Which is why Corbyn thinks they’re ‘dedicated to peace and social justice’, angrily denies they’re a terrorist group and never condemns their violent ideology. See how easy it is?

The Islamic Republic of Iran 

A shining beacon of anti-imperialism, this far-right theocracy has enchanted leftists for decades. As well as banning music, persecuting journalists and forcing women to wear headscarves, the proud regime also hang homosexuals from cranes and love dishing out fatwas to blasphemers, such as novelist Salman Rushdie, put under house arrest in 1989 after Ayatollah Hogmanay took umbrage to an offensive book he hadn’t read.

Rushdie escaped detection and still peddles his racist trash to this day, though the same can’t be said for the various publishers and translators of the book who were murdered. Another recent death sentence-recipient was Islamophobic ‘comedian’ Barry David, though this was nothing new as pretty much everyone with David’s heritage has a fatwa on their heads.

Happily, none of this has ever stopped polemicists like Comrade Milne and John Shight lauding this far-right theocracy. And it certainly never stopped Jezza speaking at an event in 2014 celebrating the regime’s 35th anniversary. Or pocketing thousands for hosting a lively phone-in on Iran’s propaganda channel Press TV, where callers spoke passionately about how much they hated Israel, Jews and Israeli Jews.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission

One of several far-right Islamist groups (MEND, CAGE) with a knack for appealing to liberals who would run a mile from such bigotry if it came from white non-Muslims, the IHRC earn top billing due to the fact that they throw by far the best party.

They are loyal to Iran and keen supporters of Hezbollah, the brave Lebanese resistance who first enchanted mainstream leftists in 2006 when pram-pushing middle-class liberals attended anti-war protests waving ‘We Are All Hezbollah’ banners, blissfully unaware that the freedom fighters they were pledging solidarity with were about as progressive as David Duke.

But the IHRC are nothing if not equal opportunities bigots, so despite their ties to Shia Iran they’ll happily break bread with their Sunni adversaries if it means sticking it to the west. Hence their 2015 Islamophobe Of The Years awards ceremony, a riotous night where they awarded top prize to the Charlie Hebdo staff. A month after 12 of them were shot dead by jihadists.

So it will surprise no-one to learn that the Dear Leader is a huge fan, saying on TV that the IHRC ‘represent all that is good about Islam’ and being a longstanding supporter of their annual hate-fest…

Al Quds Day

…Or at least he used to be until he became Labour leader and decided it might be wise to stuff his past appearances into the nearest memory hole and deny all knowledge of the far-right event’s existence. Hence, despite their London march attracting leftists from far and wide, it’s roundly ignored by high-profile Corbynites, particularly Owen Jones, who spent the weekend of this year’s bash showing solidarity with striking cinema ushers, moaning about Henry Kissinger giving a lecture in London and tweeting unironically about the far-right. (The bad far-right, not the Islamist one, obvs).

Still, despite pretending it wasn’t happening I’m sure OJ and Jezza were there in spirit, if not disguises. And it was quite a day, the highlight an impassioned speech by the IHRC’s Nazim Ali, in which he blamed Zionists for Grenfell, accused Israel of being in league with ISIS and claimed the right to Jewish self-determination was a ‘fascist ideology’. Stirring stuff, and everything you’d expect from the compere of that legendary 2015 awards ceremony, where he famously quipped that the Charlie Hebdo staff ‘couldn’t make it’ to collect their award (!).

Needless to say, before Labour put a gagging order on anyone even mentioning Kill The Jews Day, Corbyn was an enthusiastic supporter, appearing and giving rousing speeches. No such careful reluctance from the rest of the regressive left, who attend with gusto every year and proudly tweet photos of themselves hobnobbing with people who hate them.

People like Raed Salah, the far-right Israeli Arab banned from entering Britain in 2011 after it came to light he’d funded Hamas and had numerous convictions relating to anti-Semitism, terrorism, and anti-Semitic terrorism. If that doesn’t tell you the kind of freedom fighter we’re talking about, he also thinks the Jews were behind 9/11, believes in The Elder Protocols Of Zion and The Franklin Prophecy and three years ago gave a stirring speech predicting that one day Jerusalem would ‘become the capital of the global caliphate’. (Is there any dream Trump hasn’t scuppered?)

So it makes perfects sense that in 2012 Corbyn called him ‘an honoured citizen who represents his people very well’ and invited him for tea and biscuits at the House of Commons.

Similarly, far-right Muslim convert Ibrahim Hewitt is equally popular with regressives. During his time as headmaster of the Al Aqsa school in Leicester he annoyed Islamophobes by segregating children and banning music lessons, no doubt earning props from Hamas, those champions of social justice who Hewitt has met on numerous occasions through Interpal, his peaceful Islamist charity. In addition, during a Newsnight appearance in 2014 he condoned stoning women to death for adultery, and once wrote a book which he called homosexuality and ‘abominable practice’ and compared gays to paedophiles.

All things considered, you can see exactly why a LGBT/women’s rights supporter like Jezza would call Hewitt ‘a very good friend who I know extremely well’ and join the amiable bigot on trips to Gaza to chill with the Absolute Boys of Hamas.

Speaking of which, there are few Boys more Absolute than The Iraqi Resistance, that principled coalition of far-right Ba’athists and far-right Jihadists who, as George Galloway put it, ‘wrote the names of their towns and cities in the stars’ by carrying out suicide bombings on innocent people. Unsurprisingly, they had the full support of Corbyn’s Anyone But The West Coalition, demonstrating their passion for democracy and socialism by backing courageous insurgents with a penchant for blowing up polling stations and murdering trade unionists.

 

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Surely no liberal could defend the people listed above? And in a sane world, you’d be right. But desperate times call for hypocritical measures, which is why the best bet is to put these treacherous thoughts from your mind and throw all your weight behind the left-wing fascists regressives love so much. Because let’s face it, from Stalin to Castro and beyond there are multiple socialist dictators to choose from, with much greater numbers and way cooler uniforms than their far-right equivalents.

Be they brown or white, far-left or far-right, the point of these groups is to control and kill people. It doesn’t matter what side of the fence they sit on, as long as they blend that totalitarian urge with a healthy dollop of anti-westernism they can murder as many civilians as they like. So the fact that Muslims are the regressive left’s victims du jour is in no way compromised by its previous support for the Serbian generals who murdered thousands of Muslims.

Because the suffering of innocents at the hands of allies is to be ignored at all costs. As Stop The War’s Lindsay German put it when anti-regime Iranians were ejected from a Hands Off Iran protest in 2012: ‘The Iranian government is a matter for the Iranian people. We here in the West have one duty: to oppose our own regime’. A duty she wasn’t keen on affording the Iranians who turned up to do just that and had their flags pulled down for their trouble. (Needless to say, the Hezbollah flags remained present throughout.)

And for anyone wondering what this has to do with Jezza? Well, he was standing next to Ms German the whole time. Though if you’re one of those Corbynites who’d prefer to believe he wasn’t and his presence was a lie invented by the Tory press that’s totally cool too. Because as the last two years have shown, the most reliable way to counter smears about Corbyn’s support for fascists is to plead ignorance, mumble ‘what about Saudi Arabia’?, claim your opponent is a Zionist shill and insist any incriminating evidence was planted by Mossad. All of which gives the Dear Leader a free pass to come out with the most principled hypocrisy this side of his own shadow cabinet and still be lauded as the most honest politician in town.

‘I hope our government will condemn far-right re-tweets by Donald Trump. They are abhorrent, dangerous and a threat to our society’

Oh, Jeremy. Don’t ever change.