[Andy McDandy]

My dad used to call it the "and who scored the goal?" syndrome - that you can know a colossal amount of stuff but if you show one chink in your knowledge, people with much lower overall levels of education and intelligence will go "nyaaah!" and never let you forget that for all your brain science and rocket surgery skills, you don't know who Dazza's shagging on Eastenders.

It's also worth remembering that Littlejohn is firmly rooted in that late 70s/early 80s "people are wacky" tradition, exemplified by Game For a Laugh, Noel Edmonds, and more recently Chris Evans. The love of the Great British Eccentric, the championing of the plucky amateur over the reasoned or official, homespun wisdom over book learning, anecdote over evidence. But like the above mentioned, he hedges his bets. Reassure the punter that you're on their side, while encouraging everyone else to take the piss out of them.

[Samanfur]

As I've said before, it's not as if the target audience in all these Proms/National Trust/Shakespeare furores are avid consumers of those particular brands of culture. I don't mean to be snobby, but does anyone think that some thick as shit Sun reader is going to spend their Sundays dragging their kids round an art gallery? Or taking them to the theatre to enjoy Measure for Measure?

It seems to be about pushing a certain brand of culture - one that's rooted in 'heritage', a simplified and whitewashed view of the past. One in which everyone was proud to be British, or envious of us, and rightly so because we were not only best at wars but weren't beastly like the foreigners were to the natives and could write plays and shit.

Also, we've only really heard reference to the idea of 'working class culture' outside of academic circles quite recently, framed in the context of stoking division.

Prior to that, if you mentioned 'culture' or something 'cultured', it referred either to bacteria or so-called high culture. Part of the problem to me is that the outlets that stoke the idea of a culture war reinforce the idea that anything to do with 'culture' is Not For The Likes Of Us (TM), unless it involves purposefully shunning anything but that hackneyed, patronising, but increasingly common working class stereotype of someone who's not just ignorant, but proud of it and aiming to stay that way.

So you get mission creep, and people being surprised when their local libraries close, or the services they actually engage with're shut down when cultural funding shrinks.

[davidjay]

I think we're all over-analysing here. Littlejohn taps into that great English tradition of loathing everyone that isn't you. If they're a bit brighter, they're a metropolitan elitist, not as bright and they're pig ignorant. A bit better off and who do they think they are?, have a bit less and they're common. And so on, until you end up with Terry Collier's line about hating everyone in the world except those living in his street, and he's not too sure about a few of them.

[Bones McCoy]

My dad used to call it the "and who scored the goal?" syndrome - that you can know a colossal amount of stuff but if you show one chink in your knowledge, people with much lower overall levels of education and intelligence will go "nyaaah!" and never let you forget that for all your brain science and rocket surgery skills, you don't know who Dazza's shagging on Eastenders.

It's also worth remembering that Littlejohn is firmly rooted in that late 70s/early 80s "people are wacky" tradition, exemplified by Game For a Laugh, Noel Edmonds, and more recently Chris Evans. The love of the Great British Eccentric, the championing of the plucky amateur over the reasoned or official, homespun wisdom over book learning, anecdote over evidence. But like the above mentioned, he hedges his bets. Reassure the punter that you're on their side, while encouraging everyone else to take the piss out of them.

Emma Barnett - interviewing in Radio 5 live used to drive me nuts with this.

Some Politician has agreed to come on and talk about a current affair.
Emma opens with a bit of "chin music" - "How many civil servants are sick today in your Warrington office?"
Interviewee flounders about saying could get that info in 15 minutes.

Then dives in on the actual subject matter, but always ready with "But can we trust you on that when you don't know what your staff are doing".

"Good Radio", according to all the collegues.
I only saw another BBC current affairs programme go down the Punch and Judy route

[MisterMuncher]

My dad used to call it the "and who scored the goal?" syndrome - that you can know a colossal amount of stuff but if you show one chink in your knowledge, people with much lower overall levels of education and intelligence will go "nyaaah!" and never let you forget that for all your brain science and rocket surgery skills, you don't know who Dazza's shagging on Eastenders.

It's also worth remembering that Littlejohn is firmly rooted in that late 70s/early 80s "people are wacky" tradition, exemplified by Game For a Laugh, Noel Edmonds, and more recently Chris Evans. The love of the Great British Eccentric, the championing of the plucky amateur over the reasoned or official, homespun wisdom over book learning, anecdote over evidence. But like the above mentioned, he hedges his bets. Reassure the punter that you're on their side, while encouraging everyone else to take the piss out of them.

It's not unrelated to the Gish Gallop, where a barrage of inane questions can wrong-foot an expert by it being almost impossible to address every point. Then it's a simple rhetorical trick to turn that "lack of knowledge" into "what do these experts know anyway?"

It helps that the other side makes no pretension to actual knowledge and is hence absolved from responsibility to show any.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... -joke.html

Friday dose of cuntery. Woke, trans, old comics, NHS, and finally:

After the mess left behind by Mother Theresa, I repeatedly urged Boris to sign whatever it took to get us out of the EU and then pick the bones out of it later.

Now his estranged sidekick Dominic Cummings has revealed that was the plan all along.

Works for me.

Yes, you fucking genius.

[MisterMuncher]

"Solve debt problems by taking out loans and then altering the agreements in biro and posting them back to the banks"

It's the same sorry story again. Getting all the Tories to agree on something isn't the same as getting the *27 Nations of the EU* to nod it through as well.

[mattomac]

He has his very own bullshit bingo and meets it every week.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... Essex.html

No danger of becoming self aware any time soon.

[Youngian]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... Essex.html

No danger of becoming self aware any time soon.

Indeed

Hate preacher Ram Jam Choudary may be a two-bob, Toytown rabble-rouser, but he didn't kill Amess, either — even if his sticky fingerprints eventually show up, as they did when a couple of Islamist headbangers beheaded Trooper Lee Rigby in Greenwich.

[satnav]

He also says he doesn't hold Angela Rayner responsible for the death of David Amess but he conveniently drops her name in the article so that his hard of thinking readers can join up the dots.

[Andy McDandy]

I always like it when he rants about "bleeding heart do-gooder human rights lawyers like Gareth Pierce" before hastily adding "not that she has done anything related to this business".

[satnav]

It's Boris Johnson's next Jolly Green Jape... bring back the woolly mammoths! But in reality it is the longest economic suicide note in history

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... moths.html

Another ill informed brain fart from Richard Littlejohn who is too lazy to to do any basic research into climate change.

[Youngian]

Some of the worst winters we've experienced in recent history were during the immediate period after World War II when most of our electricity came from coal-fired power stations, which we are now told are responsible for melting the polar ice caps, contaminating atmosphere and blackening the sky.

In the early to mid-1970s, the alarmists were all banging on about the coming of a new Ice Age. Then came two years of scorching summers and widespread drought.

What were ‘the alarmists,’ a Lew Grade crime fighting outfit? The problem with the Ice Age hypothesis is that no evidence emerged to back it up. Not often you see a Jonathan King song referenced. Is he a great mate who was persecuted by Tom Watson?

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... stuck.html

Normal bollocks about London and low emissions policies, all Khan's fault, nice people like me don't want to use filthy public transport.

[satnav]

The direct bus from central London to Vero Beach is not as regular as it used to be, that must be the fault of Khan.

[Watchman]

Thought de Piffle had built a bridge between the two

[Cyclist]

.

[Youngian]

He clearly won't be satisfied until cars powered by internal combustion engines have gone the way of the woolly mammoth.

That’s the plan of every government in the Western world and beyond.

They include people who bought a diesel car or van before 2015, on the advice of the government and the usual 'experts', who claimed diesels were kinder to the environment than their petrol equivalents.

Gordon Brown even used the tax system to encourage the purchase of diesels.

Now, after a 180-degree handbrake turn, diesels are the spawn of the devil and we must all be punished for being responsible citizens and doing as we were told.

His attitude to science is revealing; secular religion for the too-clever-by-half who have be taken down a peg a two. Admitting you’re wrong and adjusting to emerging new evidence drives scientific progress. But the concept is an anathema and a threat to the egos of idiots like Littlejohn.

[Andy McDandy]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/arti ... gland.html

Not sure what he actually wants, but this boils down to him slating Sunak and denting his leadership hopes. Actually makes some good points (and some bloody awful ones). Stopped clock and that.