Basil Valentine
21st Century Wire
Impunity for the Corporate Guilty (and vilification for everyone else)
George Monbiot has his detractors when it comes to the stick issue of man-made climate change, but in recent weeks he has posted a number of excellent articles exposing the secret new trade deals, the slide to plutocracy, and this week, the utter impunity with which government ministers and their corporate lackeys can behave.
Yes folks, it’s not a conspiracy theory – the cats really do have all the cream. While the vulnerable can starve to death in this land of “perma-austerity”.
It’s reassuring to know that lucrative government contracts are being handed out to the incompetent, not to say down-right corrupt.
Sadly, the creeping fascism of our corporatist dystopia isn’t confined to shameless politicians and their war on the poor. We must guard too against the cultural and linguistic fascism. The thought police who leaped on former Snooker champion turned commentator, Steve Davis, over his entirely accurate and innocent remarks about why the Professional game is entirely male.
Davis had the temerity to speak his mind
Snooker doesn’t require any of the physical characteristics that enable men able to hit a golf ball further, swim faster, or jump higher than women, and so Steve was entirely justified in musing that women lack, “that single minded determination” in something that must be said is a complete waste of time – trying to put snooker balls into pockets with a long pointed stick.
He went on: “Men are ideally suited to doing something as absolutely irrelevant in life as that,” he said. “They’re the ones who have train sets in the loft. They have stamp collections to die for. Right? These are stupid things to do with your life. As is trying to practice eight hours a day to get to World Championship level.
“So therefore I think we are also the idiots of the species as well. The male of the species has got a single-minded, obsessional type of brain that I don’t think so many females have.”
Of course, one might disagree with Steve. Personally, I think he is absolutely correct, and scores of behavioural psychologists and post-Freudian analysts would agree that women – for whatever reason – simply don’t fetishize over sports or round shiny objects rolling on green felt, or other pointless pastimes in the same way that men do.
Cue the angry bird brigade. Karen Brady, one of the most visible women in British sport opined that, “Anyone who makes sweeping comments like that is from the dinosaur age.” As the chief executive of Birmingham City FC and now West Ham United FC , Karen is employed by one David Sullivan, who for those of you don’t know, has earned his money publishing particularly cheap porno mags. I’m sure the irony isn’t lost on readers.
As with the minefield of racial identity politics, a meaningful dialogue about the differences between the sexes, or types or groups of people is becoming all but impossible without knee jerk reactions and censure. Honesty and accuracy have been subjugated to political correctness.
Unless of course we are talking about people who claim benefits, in which case (as with Ian Duncan Smith) you can say whatever you like with complete impunity.
READ MORE FROM THIS AUTHOR AT: 21st Century Wire Valentine Files
