Monday - October 06, 2008

Fifty people who have wrecked Britain.  (I don’t think American papers would do it this way)

BUT I SURE WISH WE DID!

I will not list all of them here, but some that will be familiar to Americans. Possible exception is John Prescott.
I was gonna joke about the ruinous SOB and say he was a favorite of Lyndon & Chris.  But the thought of being hunted down just for a bad joke
and being badly beaten about the head decided me against such folly.
Anyway ... I am not listing in order the way the Daily Mail has it.  But you can go there for the entire list. It is interesting.

Fifty people who have wrecked Britain
• Abridged extract from FIFTY PEOPLE WHO BUGGERED UP BRITAIN by Quentin Letts, published by Constable & Robinson on Thursday, October 9, at £12.99.  Quentin Letts 2008.

Last updated at 3:27 AM on 06th October 2008

So much money, so many high-tech advances - yet today Britain is such an unhappy country, so drained of community, so robotic as it staggers towards oblivion. Who landed us in this mess? Who are the halfwits, the mooncalves, the clotpolls whose touches and yanks on the national tiller steered us onto the rocks?

It’s time to name and shame the guilty. This is my personal roll call of the people who made our country the ugly, ignorant, beer-ridden and brawling place it is today.

Here are the fools, knaves and vulgarians who ripped up British honour and glory and set in its place the tawdry and the trite. Will my list of prime suspects match your own? Read on and find out ...

12 John Prescott

Prescott was the most gormless and ineloquent person yet to hold the non-office of Deputy Prime Minister.

This so-called statesman spoke English like a bibulous chimp. In his Labour Party conference speeches, he cranked up class hatred in an era when most adult Britons were trying to place such social insecurity behind them.

He debased himself and his rank by thumping a member of the public in the 2001 General Election campaign, by bedding his secretary, by flicking V-signs on the steps of 10 Downing Street and by licking the plate of privilege until it was almost spotless.

In all these matters, Prescott, a revolting specimen with the manners of a flatulent caveman, demeaned our public life.

5.  Diana

The ‘People’s Princess’ was a liability, a souffle of false ideas, a supermodel with all that that entails. She was the glamorous tool of cleverer men, a plaything for the powerful, a delusion worshipped only by the impressionable.

The Princess may have been a loving mother. She may also have been photogenic and able to convey an easy charm. But the sorry truth is that this adored concept, this packaged, airbrushed Diana, weakened our society. She made us more neurotic.

After Diana, it became so easy to emote it was hard to tell if people meant their tears or if they were simply trying them on. Diana robbed us of the stoicism and understatement which had served Britain well.

Thanks largely to Diana we have become a country in which the words ‘crisis’ and ‘disaster’ are devalued from overuse, a country of emotional incontinence where adults will weep if they fail to win a talent competition yet where no one bothers to welcome home soldiers from a war zone.

Diana was a danger to the stability of our kingdom. She mixed in circles that were disreputable and, in some cases, neurotically anti-British. Her death was shocking, horrible and a waste of beauty.

But Diana was a naive menace, an odd mixture of simpering shyness and galloping egomania. God rest her soul, she was a mirage, a false harbinger of egalitarianism, and we were foolish ever to think otherwise.

10.  John McEnroe

Any young games player today soon learns the ways of modern Britain: the referee’s word may well not be final.

This widespread undermining of the referee (and other official authority figures) as a font of impartiality can be traced back to an afternoon at the Wimbledon tennis championships in 1981.

A call had gone against a young American player and he refused to accept it without a fight. ‘Man,’ he screamed, ‘you cannot be serious.’ Rant, rant, rant. Pout of lip. ‘Man.’ Ugh.

John McEnroe, the American in question, was one of the most skilful tennis players not only of his era but probably of all time. But he cannot properly claim to be a ‘sporting great’.

No one who shrieks at officials, ‘You guys are the pits of the world, you know that?’ can rightly be called a ‘great’, unless ‘great pain in the backside’ is intended.

McEnroe helped spread bad sportmanship to a generation of youngsters.

3.  Howard Schultz

Once upon a time, not so long ago, it was routinely possible to buy a cup of coffee for the price of a popular news paper and in a container which did not contain nearly a pint of liquid so scaldingly hot it was undrinkable for at least ten minutes after you had bought it.

Once upon a time. The time before Starbucks.

The man to blame? Howard Schultz, who did not start Starbucks, but bought the company in 1987 and focused on global domination.

In 1995, the company conceived a ‘ Synergistic Rollout Program’ under which one new store was opened somewhere every day. Now look at them. Not even the grey squirrel spread and bred this fast.

The trend may well pass. Brands are notoriously fickle things. So we must not despair.

But for the meantime, Schultz is the king of the caramel macchiatos and there seems to be nothing to stop him. Unless he drinks one too many of his filthy brews and has a fatal seizure from all the palpitations.

More Here => http://tinyurl.com/3vvakq

Who’ll be next for a lambasting by Letts? The list of shame continues tomorrow.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/06/2008 at 07:19 AM   
Filed Under: • Fun-Stuff • Miscellaneous • UK •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks (0) • Permalink •  

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