It’s opine warfare on the ‘privileged’
OUT of all the irritating words to emerge in this godforsaken year – Covidiots, lockdown, Dominic Cummings etc – the absolute worst has to be privilege.
Have an opinion on absolutely anything that isn’t directly related to your own personal situation and the “p” word is hissed at you.
Politician Dawn Butler getting stopped by the police driving in east London, for example. Obviously even having a viewpoint on this if you’re white means you are an out and out racist. And God help you if you suggest it was just a copper doing his job in a crime-ridden borough of our capital. Hell, that literally identifies you as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Apologise for your white entitlement NOW!
Then there’s obesity. Again even half think that maybe a touch of personal responsibility comes into play over diet and exercise and you’re a fat-shaming, middle-class scrawny witch who has lived an impossibly privileged life of private tennis lessons and organic veg.
Ooh and let’s not forget the migrants landing on shores every day. If you don’t subscribe to the bleeding-heart, hand-wringing view that they are fleeing conflict, terror and famine caused by us Brits in the first place then again you’re a bigot, too privileged to understand suffering.
They’re fleeing from France, for Gawd’s sake. A country not blessed with an oversupply of soap, granted, but hardly a war zone. Nor are the other five European countries they’ve probably travelled across to get there.
Even being middle-aged – once a curse – has now been lifted to a position of privilege.
Well, according to youngsters who blame us for ruining the planet, owning all the houses, taking all the jobs, voting the wrong way and very possibly still breathing.
So don’t you dare forget that dodgy hip joints, failing eyesight, grey hair, wrinkles and being a high-risk coronavirus case are all good things. Yay! Coffin dodging in Eastbourne is the new hip (replacement).
It’s bewildering to suddenly be told that what used to be healthy debate is now hate.
The scary side of playing the privilege card is that it’s pushing people the other way. Making everyone less tolerant, less understanding.
Coronavirus was meant to unite us in a fight against a common enemy. Instead we’re, ironically, wasting our breath shouting at one another even more than ever.
But the final word on this has to go to our very own Harry, Prince of Woke, who in his latest interview insists that “every single person on the planet” should “use their privilege for change”.
An interview broadcast from his £15million LA mansion and an inflated opinion of himself that only those who have been truly privileged all their life have.
And that really is taking the p (word).