Longrider

I was trying desperately to resist commenting on this, but found that I just couldn’t. Now I despise negative campaigning so I dislike the poster on those grounds, just as I deplored the Tory poster a couple of elections back that depicted Tony Blair with demon eyes. Such posters lower the tone of the election to silly name calling that appeals to the critical mass of voters who are too idle to spend time and effort thinking through the issues. The poster is not, however, anti-semetic. Stupid, purile and thoughtless, maybe, but not anti-semetic. You could argue as they have over at Samizdata that New Labour is in some way getting its just deserts - after all, it is they who have championed the hyper sensitive ” toxic identity politics” and are now being bitten on the bum by it. What are we coming to when everyone is just so ready to take offence where none was intended (although in this case it was, but for a different reason)?

Only recently Rodney Marsh was sacked for an indiscreet comment about the tsunami. Tasteless, yes. But a sackable offence? Certainly not. I recall standing alongside police officers looking at the remains of a suicide on the railway line. We cracked several equally tasteless and macabre jokes while awaiting the arrival of the doctor who had to declare that the body parts were indeed dead and the coroner’s henchmen to collect said parts. Such black humour is a part of what we are. A survival mechanism for those who have to deal with the gore of violent death on a regular (if not daily) basis. Also, how can we have taste if we do not have the opposite? And why are people so ready with their politically correct fascism to demand heads on a platter in the event of indiscretion?

I try to avoid causing offense, as I suspect most people will do naturally. But we all at sometime put our foot in it. If we get it wrong and do indeed cause offense, a simple apology should suffice. The over-reaction to these two incidents says more about those who cry foul than those who committed the offenses in the first place. Political correctness is a disease that corrodes our society with its purse lipped puritanism, stifling free speech and expression.

There’s been much palaver about the analysis of Tony Blair’s doodles in the papers and BBC today. Except, of course, they weren’t his. So red faces all round for the graphologists. According to the BBC’s article, employers are starting to use this faux science to filter out potential recruits. It is a perception that neat handwriting is a sign of a neat and tidy mind - someone who understands the rules, their place and knows how to stick to both. Or something like that. (Although as I understand it, this is not necessarily how a graphologist would analyse it).

Neither applies to me - I am rebellious, strong willed, ambitious and prepared to stick to my guns when I know I’m right. My mind is anything but tidy, having a tendency to take lateral leaps when problem solving. I also have appalling handwriting. There is simple explanation for this. My hand has difficulty keeping up with my brain - so as my thoughts race away, the pen is gainfully struggling to keep up with the end product looking as if a spider crawled across the page following a riotous night on the town. It says absolutely nothing about my personality. Indeed, if I was asked at an interview to submit to one of these tests, I would walk out. A company that is prepared to judge its prospective employees on the basis of “science” that is about as scientific as astrology is not a company I would want to work for.

While graphology may be a bit of fun as a leisure pursuit, on the whole, I treat it with the same degree of scepticism as the Telegraph.

So Kilroy finally ditched the odious little Englander party UKIP. Now he has set up his own version Veritas. He chose this name because it is the Latin for “truth”. You would have thought someone who believes “our country is being stolen from us by mass immigration” would have come up with a good old English word for his new party. Anyway, so when is he going to the decent thing by those folk foolish enough to vote for him and resign his seat? That way he can recontest it under his new colours and give those same voters the right to decide whether they want him or his former party to represent them.

Ah, but that would be risking losing his seat in the European parliament, wouldn’t it?