Sunday 1 June 2014

An Apology

Last year, during an interview with Mel Ulm for his Reading Lives website, I made the following comment: “I like the sound of the Five Star Movement in Italy, led by the comedian Beppe Grillo, which recently got a big vote in the general election there.

A little later in the same interview I said this: “I think there are many on the left who richly deserve to be handed over to the Argentinian Generals."

The full interview can be read here.
The dude on the right in white is Beppe Grillo. He is now considering an alliance in the European Parliament with the dude on the right with the teeth. See here

It seems many in Grillo's Five Star Movement are not as in love with Nigel Farráge as Beppe Grillo appears to be. However, I feel I must now issue this clarification: last year I would have voted for Beppe Grillo. Now, I think he should have this done to him. 
Grillo says his new buddy Nige is not a racist. Who knows? Perhaps, on a personal level, he isn't? Maybe Farrage's yacht club style rants about Romanians are just a ruse to get idiots in Thurrock and Rotherham and Billericay all hot and bothered. Perhaps he doesn't believe a word of it. Farrage has the turd gobbling grin of someone whose political career will likely end in scandal. Hopefully he'll be caught by a photographer from the Daily Express engaged in a threesome with the late Robert Kilroy Silk and an illegal immigrant from Tajikistan in a budget hotel near Brimsdown...In the meantime, Farrage is a toxic knob who shouldn't be encouraged.

Personally, I don't understand people bothered by immigration. Never have. I'd far rather live in a country which people were trying to get into than one from which they were forever trying to escape. I have an extended essay on this subject 'Unmasking the Real Enemy' in my book Mentioning the War.  The essay can also be read on the web archive of Red Banner magazine, where it first appeared in 2001. 

Since then my ideas have evolved very slightly. I now also believe that, far from clamping down on immigration, we should consider instead deporting some of the locals - those with entirely able bodies who spent the years before the crash passing wind into cushions bought for them by others, and writing complaining letters to the local rag. Give all of the genuinely useless a one way ticket to Madagascar or Belarus and free up some space for a few more immigrants who are in general altogether more charming and hardworking than the average UKIP whinger from Basildon or Doncaster.

Similarly, I also feel I need to clarify my comment about feeding some on the Left to the Argentinian Generals. 

 I think there are many on the left who richly deserve to be handed over to the Argentinian Generals.”

Obviously, this was a disgraceful comment. And I entirely stand by it.