Cut-Rate Progressives...

It seems the local newspapers have been casting eyes at the success of the Guardian’s ‘Comment is Free’ website, and would like some of that action. Therefore, they have opened up blogspace on some of their on-line newspapers.

One to take up that challenge is someone blogging under the name ‘Jo Chipchase’. Here are the pearls of wisdom that drop from her lips:

Yesterday morning, I was in Gatwick Airport helping to despatch my kids’ half siblings on a flight to France to see their aunt. We were sitting in one of the North Terminal cafe bars, where Sky News was showing on the widescreen TV. Suddenly, a shocking piece of footage appeared and grabbed my attention. Uniformed men were dragging a screaming infant along a pavement. A pregnant woman was lying unconscious on the ground. I squinted at the screen. Was it a war zone? Afghanistan? No: it was French gendarmes removing African squatters from a Paris housing estate.

Oh, noes! People enforcing their country's laws! How awful...!

I was even more shocked when, later in the day, I viewed the same YouTube-derived footage more clearly on the Daily Mail website and read the bigoted comments posted below.

Really? Such as..?

Said one reader: “Those women were the ones at fault; they used their children as a shield! I wish we in our country would take a stronger stand.”

Said another: “Any chance of it happening here? Thought not. Too many liberal bleeding hearts, lefty do gooders, sucking-up politicians and civil liberties stirrers. Well done France.”

“Where were the men,” asked a few more people. “Why didn’t they (the women and children) cooperate with the police?”

Hmmm, I can't actually see anything bigoted about those comments. Is she sure that...

Oh:

The general tone was one of bigotry and ‘clever France’.

Sweetie, all I can say is, you've clearly led a sheltered life. And I hope, for your sake, you never see any genuine bigotry.

Still, at least she didn't run to the favoured 'CiF' ad hominem and go for a Godwi...

/headdesk

This scenario has a disturbing, if vague, undertone of Nazi Germany: if we kicked out all those pesky immigrants who are taking our jobs here in Britain (such as low paid shift work within the hospitality industry, which English people don’t generally want to do), straining our welfare state and depleting our social housing stock, we could have more lebensraum, ja?

Well, at least there's no mention of that bogeyman of the Left, the BN...

/facepalm

It’s bad enough that the BNP won 1.9% of the vote in the recent general election and that Nick Griffin is an elected MEP without being subjected to the far-right-wing hysteria of Little Englanders who wish to pull up the drawbridge and preserve “an English place for English people”…

Well, she's got the perfect Left-wing trifecta. Almost. At least she hasn't decided that the immigrants are prefarable to her countryme...

/doublefacepalm

My easygoing and professional French housemate has worked as a catering manager in a Brighton-based institution for the last few years. He tells me that, recently, the prevailing public attitude towards foreign nationals in the UK has noticeably shifted. Not so long ago, a colleague told him to “f*ck off back to your own country” because he didn’t like the composition of a mixed salad. Bearing in mind that some Brits are satisfied with their salad containing a lettuce leaf and a slice of cucumber garnished with salad cream – and maybe damp cress if you’re lucky - I would have thought that French-influenced cuisine and the people who create it would be welcomed with open arms.

I've no doubt bigger and brighter things await you, 'Miss Chipchase'.