Guardianistas David Aaronovich and Nick Cohen have – independently, I assume… – come up with two excellent parodies of wankers [*]:
"The Liberal Democrats are so soft on crime they would tear down the jails and let murderers roam the streets; Labour is sending paedophiles to rape your daughters, while it puts up your taxes, dumps gypsies in your backyard and calls you a ‘racist’ if you complain."
"There are too many immigrants. Criminality goes unpunished while law-abiding citizens are victimised. Hard-working people are penalised by high taxes that go to pay for no-hopers to study Mickey Mouse courses at former polytechnics. It’s all going to the dogs."
The Aaro article is something of a return to form: he does an excellent job of highlighting the massive improvements in nearly all aspects of Britlife since 1997, while also suggesting that Blair should probably have resigned over the Iraq fiasco. I’m with him on both counts.
More generally, I really don’t understand how people can possibly believe the talking points about high crime, societal collapse, etc. Actually, I can, having been part of the blogland reaction to the Lancet and Unicef studies: most people are simply too stupid to base their opinions on evidence, and instead just repeat the self-serving lies of evil cynical bastards (that’s most people on both sides, although the rightwing ones tend to annoy me more).
[*] ‘wankers’ is meant in this sense.
An interesting thing to look at is how much of the socially progressive aspects of "things that have happened since 1997" are actually the result of measures carried out in the first term and look at the 2001-05 government on its own. New Labour actually shapes up quite badly on the "what have you done for me lately?" test.
Your phrase "whiny self-pitying overprivileged wankers" in the post before was ringing a bell, I couldn’t remember what, and now I remember glancing at this in the Observer’s Aaronovitch article:
"isn’t there at least an argument to be had about the spread of democracy?"
Pathetic. Someone please invite that guy to a middle-class dinner party, and let him make excuses the Blair warmongering by having an "argument about democracy", now that would be something…