Superior swivel-eyed right-wingery from the country's most conservative commentator. Here's a list of some, but not all of the things P. Hitchens blames for the terminal decline of Britain in the 20th century:World War 1, World War 2, US ascendency, lefties in general, Roy Jenkins, Margaret Thatcher, the European Union, the disappearance of leather shoes in favour of trainers, Dutch elm disease, pornography, the contraceptive pill, abortion, trendy teachers who don't believe in teaching, trendy COE vicars who don't believe in God, paramilitary police, Grange Hill, the abolition of grammar schools, the abolition of the death sentence, the abolition of hell, television, the Teletubbies, computer games, David Frost, Alan Bennett, John Lennon's Imagine, the state's war on the family, the infantilisation of education, sloppy grammar, drugs, the ease of divorce, the funeral of Princess Diana, the trial of Derek Bentley, the trial of Lady Chatterley's Lover, the trial of Deirdre Rachid, year zero radicals of every stripe, political correctness gone mad and Tony Fucking Blair.
On the other hand, he likes Winston Churchill and George Orwell.
This book was published ten years ago, so Hitchens doesn't even get a chance to stick it to the following:
The war on Iraq, the war on terror, Gordon Brown, Gordon Ramsay, Simon Cowell, Stephen Fry, the smoking ban, mobile phones, immigration laws, self service check-outs in the supermarket, people saying UK rather than United Kingdom, 4chan, 2 girls 1 cup, and David Fucking Cameron.
Fantastic stuff - eloquent, angry and elegiac for a lost Britain. No-one can possibly agree with everything he says, but you may find yourself nodding along more than you expected. Depends if you've had a drink.
3 comments:
I would add Aussie Question Intonation AKA the High Rising Terminal to that list. Drives me up the wall? But so many people do it?
Oh I'm sure the Australian interrogative intonation gets all up in his business too? Here are a couple of suggestions about its rise?
a)young people are unconfortable making assertions and subconsciously revert to questions, partly because of poor education leading to a lack of confidence in their opinions, and partly because trendy postmodernism and moral relativity is now embedded so deeply in our culture that the very idea of a truth or even honestly held opinion has become morally dubious.
b) Neighbours.
I've remembered another recent Hitchens goat-getter. People saying train station instead of railway station.
It must be exhausting for him.
Why am I not surprised I stopped to google '2 girls 1 cup'. What I am surprised about is my need to google it in the first place considering such notorious wretchedness usually ends up on my radar one way or the other (in this case from you Joe - thanks mate.)
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