Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Initial reaction to long service – and long hair
The two-page special in last week’s Gazette on Colin Carmichael’s 20th anniversary as chief executive of Canterbury City Council produced a fair few comments from the city centre wags I rattle about with at weekends.
One said: “So the CC has done 20 years as the CE of the CCC.”
Another spied the 1975 picture of Colin taken in the Cloisters at Canterbury Cathedral and opined: “Not so much local government administrator as Taliban recruiting sergeant.”
Kudos to the two Barton Court pupils talking foreign language grammar rules outside Fenwick last Thursday. “No, you see that’s a feminine noun, not a masculine noun,” one told the other.
Blimey, in my day it was football stickers: “You want to swap the Arsenal badge for the Coventry City line-up? Naff off, you melon.”
Jimmy Cox, of Lower Hardres, had a letter published in The Spectator on the subject of how to be addressed: “I’m well over 70 and find it irritating to be addressed by a 20-year-old who I have never met by my first name. I have found the answer if I am ringing up ... is to give only my surname.
“On the few occasions that I have been asked ‘Do you have a Christian name?’ I reply ‘Yes, but it is not relevant’. Pompous, I agree, but it does have the desired effect.”
Well said, Jim...
Mind you, I don’t like receiving email marked “Dear Mr Bell...” This form of communication seems utterly unsuited to that formality.
Former Langton Boys teacher and Canterbury sports shop owner John Mitchell turned up on BT Sport’s Rugby Tonight the other night, representing Canterbury Rugby Club on the show, a kind of Top Gear meets Soccer AM for the oval ball game. Unfortunately for the 63-year-old, the camera succeeded in advertising the sizeable paunch developing around his midriff.
On the morning of Wednesday, November 10, 2016, it became apparent that a great many people had collectively taken leave of their senses.
They had, quite simply, gone mad, doolally, bonkers.
Some admitted to writhing around in agony and sobbing uncontrollably, others took on the guise of Old Testament prophets and foretold the imminent destruction of the world, others produced accounts which might have been clever parodies if they weren’t, in fact, being wholly serious.
The US presidential election, you see, wasn’t about how the citizens of that great and friendly nation had been asked to decide who should make their laws and raise their taxes.
No, no, no. It was about how a bunch of self-regarding, self-righteous, pious drips in Canterbury, who usually spend their days uploading pictures of cats and gastropub food to Facebook, felt about an election they did not take part in for a country they do not inhabit.
Here’s a brief overview of how this group of people from Canterbury – many I count as good friends – feel: “Mwaaaaah!!! It’s so unfair! America is evil, full of racist monsters! The world is about to end! Help, I can’t breathe!”
Honestly, get a hold of yourselves.
What’s more, these are the sort of people who are quite content to tell you that they hate America and Americans (they’re not xenophobes, mind) so why in the world they should care who won is anyone’s guess.
I happen to hold an American passport and I couldn’t have given a hoot. Both candidates were equally repellent.
But, as I turned on my computer and absorbed the diarrhoea of Facebook posts dripping with the watery consistency which characterises that variety of excreta, I suddenly felt quite elated.
Donald Trump’s victory had became a source of pure pleasure. The best thing about it isn’t that he is going to be the 45th president – far from it.
Rather, it’s that it upset exactly the right people – the frothing at the mouth, antidemocratic, hectoring, overemotional, self-absorbed wet farts who, as Carly Simon sang, are so vain they think this election was about them.
And his victory has done it for exactly the right reasons. It’s a Patriot Missile into the monumental arrogance which supposes that an ordinary voter in Middle America must think the same way as a liberal, university-educated public sector employee living in south-east England.
Consider this from a woman I was at school with in Canterbury: “I look at my family, my lovely, beloved family, in which different ethnicities, sexualities and genders are blended together through the working of love, and I’m genuinely afraid for us, and others like us, who don’t and won’t fit into the neat categories nationalism insists upon.” What on earth are you blathering on about, woman? Is Trump coming for you personally?
It didn’t end there. She spoke of her own “nauseating dread”, tossed in some further crap about “love and happiness” and inserted the obligatory reference to education (they would have voted right if they had been properly taught, you see). There was also a mention of “the vote” and the “right to be heard”, which is, of course, what free elections provide.
Elsewhere, another ex-schoolmate wrote: “What do you say when you are truly this dumbfounded / scared / horrified / aghast / confused / depressed / broken...[?]
“Is it really true that there are more angry, unprogressive people in the world than those who want to grow, educate, be equal and prosper like us, my Facebook friends?”
What that second sentence is supposed to mean is not the point. These statements belong to people who trade exclusively in the idea of their own lilywhite goodness and are desperate to project their uncontestable virtue. Truth and reality are obliterated by the pathological need to be one of the morally upright.
What’s more this self-pitying, mawkish, cringeworthy sentimental rubbish isn’t challenged in the comments section.
It’s applauded as if it contains some sort of wisdom or meaningful insight. There’s a chorus of Bill Clintons chipping in with: “Ah feel your pain.”
Even Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby couldn’t resist getting in on the vicarious outpouring of grief act when he urged a period of “reconciliation”. Would he have done the same had Hill won? Of course not, she was the correct candidate, the right one, the enlightened person’s choice.
So America would have been as sweet as mom’s pumpkin pie if it had gone the other way? Oh, do me a Twinkie. The Hill is as divisive and unpopular a figure as The Donald.
In September she described a vast swathe of voters thus: “Half of Trump’s supporters you could put into a basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.” Yep, way to go!
And, of course, it was only a matter of time before Trump was compared to Hitler on Facebook.
Someone posted a picture of him with the Fuhrer’s trademark ’tache accompanied by the words “mein Trumpf”. Wow, so intelligent, so original, so illuminating, I can hardly contain myself.
A rather less hysterical friend put it another way: “Basically, anyone they don’t like is Hitler.”
The most important thing to learn is that it’s not Trump – or even Brexit – that they really hate. It’s the system, a system which allows the wrong people to make choices of which they disapprove.
They have come to realise that they hate democracy and – more to the point – they are realising they no longer need it.
Last week we learned that the West Gate Inn in North Lane, one of the Wetherspoon pubs, has one of the best toilets anywhere.
Khasi inspectors gave it a platinum rating after sniffing around during an unannounced visit.
I’m surprised they didn’t come to me for my thoughts. Regular readers might recall that in February 2014 I achieved the pinnacle of journalistic endeavour by carrying out a survey of every single public loo in Canterbury.
If there’s anyone who knows about toilets, it’s me.
Last week’s letter from David Reekie, of Fordwich Road, correctly identified one half of the aggressive multiculturalism I discussed a fortnight ago.
Namely, the malicious bashing of the country, usually by pointing out how racist it is/was.
As David makes clear, the BBC performed this task by producing a disgracefully inaccurate picture of Britain, traducing it as “the heart of the slave empire”.
The other aspect of aggressive multiculturalism is the relentless appeal to race or colour which fosters division and animosity. In this, too, the Beeb is streets ahead.
After reading my piece on multiculturalism, a good friend who works for our state broadcaster emailed me a copy of its Diversity and Inclusion Strategy 2016-2020.
There’s this sense that people of colour or the disabled are photographic props so that those who create this drivel can feel good about themselves.
On a more unattractive note, it contains quota targets for the number of women, disabled people, LGBTS, and ethnic minorities in the workforce. In other words, the emphasis is on identity not ability.
What on earth does a person’s sexual preference have with their ability to make TV programmes?
Fact of the day: It is exactly four weeks until the 2017 PDC World Darts Championships begin. Heaven awaits...