Tuesday 5 May 2009

Flee! Run for your lives!

This post was just gonna be a quick media-watch post with a snippet from Matthew Norman:
Kelvin MacKenzie has a pop at the remade Reggie Perrin starring Martin Clunes. I thought the first episode was hilarious, but that seems the minority view, and Kelvin took grave umbrage. "Some between-jobs idiot at the BBC decided it could be updated," he harrumphs. "Having seen the first show, the answer is clear – no it couldn't." Well, he has a point. It can be pitiful when people try to reinvent a memorable triumph of old. Kelvin's paper, meanwhile, featured Gordon Brown's face in a 60 watt bulb beside the headline "Will The Last Young Family To Leave Britain For Australia Or New Zealand Please Turn Out The Lights".


Presumably the quote came from Kelvin's column of the same title, with the same light bulb picture.
A read through of Kelvin's piece this morning shows that either Matthew Norman is mistaken and was obviously thinking of a different Kelvin Mackenzie or the bit about trying to re-invent old triumphs was removed. As The Sun doesn't let Google cache its pages we shall never know...

Anyway, I read Kelvin's piece and, after much scrubbing of the eyeballs, thought it needed a few things pointing out.

All the time he [Brown] took credit for the global boom, never once criticising the bankers, the private equity guys or the hedgies.

He loved them because they paid huge taxes and he was able to conduct his Scottish social experiment of giving money away to the useless and the layabouts, making sure that the great unwashed would vote Labour for ever.

Ah, of course, anyone without a job or is unable to work are naturally layabouts and useless and I also seem to remember the Sun being huge fans of New Labour before Gordon rose to the Premiership.

With our vaults deserted thanks to his profligacy, the economic tsunami hits us and then it becomes a global phenomenon.

His solution is to borrow even more, knowing, of course, he is going to be thrown out in a massive humiliation next June. But then it will be Cameron’s problem.

Perhaps that’s considered, in his twisted little obscene world, to be clever politics. But perhaps I could remind you, Mr Brown, that it’s OUR money and OUR future you’re playing with, not yours.


'OUR money and OUR future'. Man of the people is citizen Mackenzie. But he seems to forget that his paper and editor also plays with people lives.

Well, it’s time to do something about it. Normally I would advocate going up to No 10 and punching him firmly on the nose...


Because violence really does work, normally, but these are exceptional times.

...but if you have a family and are under 40 years of age could I urge you to take another course — desert our country as swiftly as you can and head for Australia or New Zealand and a new life.


Yes, you read it right, The Sun advocating immigration! It's ok though, because this is different. This is Brits going abroad, so it's emigration and everyone loves us Brits. Except those evil Muslims that want to destroy western civilisation, of course.

I thought that the Sun was supposed to be patriotic? First sign of trouble from a party that the Sun helped install and keep there for over twelve years and its ex-editor columnist is advising us all to swamp another country.

After all, we won’t have paid the debts run up by the socialist swindlers until 2032, so the only thing you will be missing is rubbing shoulders with the thick and the skint.


If everyone buggers off, won't it take longer for the debt to be paid off?

Such a move will upset your parents, but what with email, mobile phones and the low cost of flying you’ll probably hear and see more of each other than you do at the moment.


I doubt it very much. If you don't see or hear much of your family when you're in the same country, why would you when you're the other side of the planet?
Yes, there is email and to begin with, you may send photos and stuff back to family but that will taper off as you get used to the place. There are mobile phones, but what that has to do with anything, I have no idea. Has Kelvin seen the prices for calling Europe, where we are all supposed to be equal, never mind Australia?
And the flights, yes they are cheaper, but £500 is still a lot of money for some people and with 12 hours of flying and then the jet lag, it's not quite feasible to pop over for the weekend.

And now we see who Kelvin is really talking to...
Personally I will miss you because you think like me. You don’t want state handouts, you simply want to do your work, come home and be with your family without the state constantly looking over your shoulder or stealing 50 per cent of your money

People earning over £150,000, not the more common (as in more of them) reader who earns much less.

When Trevor Kavanagh warned us about the flight of the rich, I wasn't expecting the same paper to be urging them to leave.

2 comments:

Five Chinese Crackers said...

I wonder who MacKenzie expects to fill thhe gaps left by the hardworking young people he's urging to leave the country. Couldn't be foreigners could it?

What a tool.

merrick said...

"the bankers, the private equity guys or the hedgies. He loved them because they paid huge taxes"

And there was me thinking they owned everything offshore and hired fiendishly clever accountants to ensure they paid fuck all taxes. You know, like Murdoch does.

"we won’t have paid the debts run up by the socialist swindlers"

And there was me thinking the debts were bailing out the shitstorm run up by the freemarket capitalists. You know, the ones Murdoch's been cheering on in the Sun for the last thirty years.

"stealing 50 per cent of your money"

He's right, it's theft. As long as the people paying tax never use anything paid for by government he's got a point.