Cliches of 2011 #4

"Use the off switch or change channel".

The recent controversy triggered by the TopGear trio of Disco Vicars (Clarkson, Hammond, May) and their round of offensive comments dressed up as just-a-bit-of-fun prompted the usual charge of lame justifications.

From "no-one cares" (read "I don't, meeeeee, therefore it follows that the whole world doesn't either") and "haven't the Mexicans more important things to think about", to "this country is losing its sense of humour", the defenders of casual bullying and casual racism have been out in force to stick up for the three white upper class broadcasters.

The lamest defence, however, comes in the guise of the trite "You don't need to watch TopGear. Use the off switch or change channel".

Which really says a lot about some people's sapped power of observation. Because:

a) TopGear is paid for by the taxpayer - that is you and me and the bloke over there. You may change channel (and rest assured Clarkson's is the last TV programme this blog would want to watch), but still you won't be able do jack to stop your own money from being used to fund Clarkson and his side-splitting remarks about the disabled, the blind and various vulnerable people.

b) This is no page-32 article written in dubious taste and published by some local paper we're talking about. Alas, TopGear is the most popular BBC programme worldwide. Me and you may switch off the telly, but in the meantime tens of millions of people abroad will have found more reasons to believe the Brits' growing reputation as a nation of small-minded xenophobic little islanders.

c) Like Steve Coogan wrote in his Observer piece this morning, "tolerance of casual racism [is] arguably the most sinister kind [as] [i]t's easy to spot the ones with the burning crosses".

So here's a question for the "I'm-Not-Racist" Brigade: what's more dangerous and more hateful, a twat dressed up in ku klux klan robes that everyone can see, or a (not so) subtle and growing set of xenophobic remarks thrown left right and centre and dressed up as "just-a-bit-of-fun"?

If no-one ever stood up to bullies and racists in the name of "getting-a-sense-of-humour" and "relaxing", telly would still be packed with stuff like The Black and White Minstrel Show and Curry and Chips.

You may be content enough to switch channels, but I don't want to be forced to spend £145.50 a year to reinforce the notion that the British constantly look down on everything foreign, thank you very much.

Jeremy Clarkson and his sidekicks can play the bully if they want, but not with the taxpayer's money.

PS: Incidentally- Three Brits pouring scorn on Mexican food saying that it's like "sick with cheese on top"? Brits laughing at other people's food???? Now what did you say about sense of humour?

Click here to access the full list of cliches (2010-11):
"Young female TV presenters are a response to market demand".
"You've GOT to own your own home";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".

Cliches of 2011 #3

"Young female TV presenters are a response to market demand".

Last week former Countryfile host Miriam O'Reilly won a case against the BBC on the grounds of ageism, after losing her job the moment she turned 50.

It was reported that O'Reilly "had been asked if it was 'time for Botox' and was warned to be 'careful with those wrinkles when high definition comes in'". The case ended with the BBC issuing an apology and Director General Mark Thompson phoning Miriam saying: "Sorry, we got things wrong in the way older women are treated".

One category of people, however, reacted to the news with little sympathy, their views typified by entrepreneur James Caan. On last Thursday's BBC Question Time, he said: "TV channels respond to market demand", adding that "if we're really honest, as a consumer society [we want to see] young, pretty, dolly-looking people" on TV.

And so here we are again. The mythical notion of "the consumer society" evoked to justify anything that suits whichever ruthless practice of the day - nevermind questions of humanity, taste or simple pig-headedness.

It's the 21st-century version of the Ancient Spartans' custom of chucking people off a cliff as a means of 'purging' their population of weakness. "Sorry very much, it's what the market demands", become the default smokescreen for anything, crass varieties of geezerist ageism included.

Shame these people never specify which "market demand" or "demographics" they're referring to.

No doubt there are copious amounts of randy people who genuinely look forward to seeing "young, pretty, dolly-looking people" on the telly, the same way there will always be a constituency for the Sun and various rags of an onanistic inclination.

But what about the equally vast amounts of viewers who are unfazed by all of the above? Haven't they got a right to have their "market demand" heard too?

There are millions out there who don't judge the quality of a programme on the basis of whether the presenter was born in 1940, 1960 or 1991.

Those who would rather television reflected real life (ie not everybody looking like a fembot); those who find this obsessive quest for everything "young" and "fast" and "trendy" and "wicked" both pathetic and patronising.

Or those who think that we've already fulfilled our fix of giddiness or trollop-ness on both the TV screens and the newsagents' shelves.

Ignore all of the above and the market demand becomes a severely crook-eyed one.

Click here to access the full list of cliches (2010-11):
"You've GOT to own your own home";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue";
"Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Cliches of 2011 #2

"You've GOT to own your own home".

This particularly simplistic cliche' shuns a series of complications.

For instance, in an ever unpredictable job market, what happens if your only hope of dodging the dole queue means moving from place to place?

Or, what do you do if you don't do your homework properly and you find yourself saddled with a structurally unsound home or with the family from hell living next door? If you were renting, you'd just tell the landlord and pack your bags. But if you bought it and don't have the extra dosh to sort it out, then you may be up shit creek. If not for the rest of your life, definitely for an awful long time.

But the most unpalatable truth is the one related to finances.

Of course, it's all very nice to own a house if you have the funds, but Britain's the place where an alarming number of people have fallen for the spell of "getting on the property ladder" and the illusion of "asset ownership" no matter how barely they can afford it.

The last 15 years have seen a ridicuous number of tv programmes turning home ownership into the nation's biggest fetish: Property Ladder, Location Location Location, Grand Designs, Homes Under the Hammer, One Year to Pay Off Your Mortgage, and god knows how many others. They all had one thing in common however: the notion that, yes, you too can own a house and point at it while hugging your smiling partner- that's what makes you a happy family. The ultimate dream. The be all and end all of existence.

One thing, however, is never mentioned: the simple fact that it's not your asset and it will not be until the final instalment thirty-plus years from now.

You can be paying back your mortgage religiously over decades, each and every month, easily in excess of hundreds of thousands of pounds of hard-earned cash. But if something goes tits up (i.e. you lose your job), that all goes down the drain and so does "your asset" - which means your home gets repossessed.

Did you know that in the last three years alone in excess of 120,000 families were kicked out of their "own assets" (details here, here and here)? Remember 120,000 is the number of homes repossessed, meaning that the average number of people affected since 2007, children included, may be knocking on half a million.

It's a national tragedy, but one that the media rarely talks about, perhaps because of its supremely depressing nature. Or, perhaps, because it may highlight the unpleasant story that lies behind the most inflated and speculative "industry" in the country, one where average house prices didn't double or triple, but quadrupled (QUADRUPLED), between 1995 and the pre-recession peaks of 2007.

Other cliches:
"Not everyone is obsessed with...";
"Why can't Britain cope with snow?...";
"Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top";
"There are jobs out there if you really want one";
"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue";
"Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Cliches of 2011 #1

"Not everyone is obsessed with"...

Typical but by no means exclusive of right-wingers, this variant of "whataboutery" is the final cop-out used by those too blinkered by ideology, bigotry or religious zealotry to concede that their argument is all over the place.

Look at the way, for instance, it's often deployed by closet homophobes.

When the subject of sexual equality for all is raised and facts are spelt out about past or existing discrimination, the latent homophobe will not say something appalling in return, but will instead cling on to the lame "yeah but, anyway, not everyone is obsessed with gay rights" as their pathetic last resort.

"Not everyone is obsessed with..." can be perused whenever truths are starting to grate or when arguments have run dry over whichever subject doesn't suit your warped ideological worldview.

Low wages, inequality, the environment, human rights, misogyny, cruelty to animals, balooning transport fares, the cost of education, you name it. Not everyone is obsessed with 'it', no matter how wrong 'it' is, which might as well read "let's leave things as they are, because I actually quite agree with 'it', even though I haven't got the cojones to openly say so".

Of course, you'll find the people coming up with the above remark will probably not grasp the irony of them being obsessed with issues as vital as supporting angling or the abolition of speed limits.

Click here to read the Cliches of 2010.

Cliches of 2010 #6

"Why can't Britain cope with snow while other countries can?"

Because it's not true. Bad weather regularly disrupts travel and normal services in a number of countries, not just Little England.

You hear it time and again, each and every winter, when heavy snowfall is met by headlines like chaos, BIG FREEZE or COLDEST [month] SINCE RECORD BEGAN.

Or, if not "since record began", then maybe the coldest for 20/50/90 years, or since 1962, depending on the article you read. Or, perhaps, even, "AA's busiest night for breakdowns in 25 years" - anything as long as it's a superlative sentence.

And the panicky headlines are invariably accompanied by the usual "Why can't Britain cope with snow?" and "why do we grind to a halt at the first snowflake and other countries don't"? Google those words and you'll find the very same question cropping up dozens of times and not just from this uber-cold 2010 or 2009, but all the time.

And yet it wouldn't take much to clock that weather-related self-flagellation is complete nonsense.

While it's obviously true that the weather is being incredibly disruptive, similar levels of chaos (and casualties, in some cases) are reported across France, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia as well as throughout Spain, Italy and also Eastern Europe.

Last year was a similar picture, with a nasty cold snap forcing airports to shut, not just in the UK, but also in other countries like Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Northern Italy, etc.

Why some people want to believe that whatever happens on their doorstep is only happening to them and them alone remains one of the mysteries of Clicheland.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#5 "Students should engage in the democratic vote...".
#4 "Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top".
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man"

Cliches of 2010 #5

"Students should engage in the democratic vote instead of protesting".

But that's what they did!

The majority of students voted LibDem at the last general election. According to a YouGov poll published in May (see here), a stunning 45 per cent of the student vote went to the Liberals, making Nick Clegg and Vince Cable's party the firm favourite in campuses up and down the country.

And that's why students and perspective students are fuming. They think all democratic doors have been slammed in their faces. When Tony Blair u-turned on tuition fees in 2003-04, students turned out in droves to support the only mainstream party that still actively campaigned to scrap university fees.

Now that the LibDems too humiliated millions who cast their vote in good faith, it's hardly surprising that many no longer see any point in the democratic process. Cue the repeated protests. Cue the anger.

And they get even angrier when they hear patronising sermons that Thursday's vote in the Commons is true democracy in action. That's the will of the majority and "put up or shut up".

However, what is democratic in passing bills thanks to the same MPs who - only months before - asked for a mandate to do the exact opposite once in office, I'll leave it to you to work out. I can't get my head round it.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#4 "Society benefits from extreme wealth at the top".
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Cliches of 2010 #4

"Society as a whole benefits from extreme wealth at the top".

You've heard it time and again. Believers in the Ideology of Number One tend to cling onto the moral justification that obscene levels of wealth will inevitably "trickle down" to the rest of society - as famously spelt out by Ronald Reagan in 1981.

"Cut tax on the rich and turn a blind eye on tax avoidance and even you, overworked, casual and on low pay will feel better off".

According to the Believers, the super wealthy generate employment and investments and make people like Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson feel tremendously excited.

However, if the Believers were right, the last 30 years (which have been extremely generous to the "wealth creators") wouldn't have resulted in such a steady decline of real wages and salaries for the poorer half of the population (see this).

The binge in corporate profits has been inversely proportional to salaries paid to ordinary mortals. Wages as a proportion of national GDP went from a peak of 64.5 per cent in the mid-1970s to 53.2 per cent in 2008 (link- see figures 1, 2 and 4).

In Britain, the bottom 50% now own a staggeringly low 1 per cent of the country's "marketable wealth". The only thing ordinary workers have seen increase is personal debt which tripled in the last ten years (see this - page 2).

Quite simply, there is no correlation whatsoever between the fortunes of the most loaded and the rest of the country. In fact, maybe there is, but in reverse.

If still in doubt, just look at this simple fact: in 2009, at the height of the biggest economic crisis in decades, "the 1,000 richest people in the country increased their wealth by £77 billion". It was, according to the Sunday Times, "easily the biggest annual rise in [...] 22 years".

No wonder the usual suspects froth at the mouth when the prospect of higher tax rates for the rich and a clampdown on tax avoiders is even mentioned. It would be tantamount to disaster, vandalism and "plundering from career politicians", they say - quoting psalm after psalm from The Free Market Bible.

So-called "wealth creators" in Britain have never had it so good. The most devastating economic crash happened under a system with low corporation tax, a reputation for low tax on the wealthy, tax havens in Crown dependencies (see this), the most flexible labour market in Western Europe and a property system inviting speculation with open arms.

For some, it's never enough.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#3 "There are jobs out there if you really want one".
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Cliches of 2010 #3

"There are jobs out there if you really want one"

You really think so? Go on then. You give it a go.

But at least have the decency to do so and stand on your own two feet instead of relying on mummy and daddy's handouts, free-rent and free grub as you tell them about application form no.35 being rejected.

You find that most people who come up with the blind belief that "if you really *but really* want to work, you can find a job at McDonalds or Tesco" are generally those who've never had the pleasure of trying.

Or if they have - and luck was on their side - they assume that the same fate would automatically await everybody else. "It happened to MEEE? Then it must be a universal law".

Except that these people forget two crucial factors.

1) Simple figures. According to the latest from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), "[t]he number of vacancies for the three months to October 2010 was 453,000, down 27,000 over the quarter". And guess what? There are 1.47m registered "jobseekers", meaning that for every vacancy there are three people applying.

For the record, "the number of employees and self-employed people who were working part-time because they could not find a full-time job increased by 67,000 on the quarter, to reach a record high of 1.15 million". Which is great, but you can only do that if you've got other ways of supplementing your income.

2) As for the "you-can-get-something-at-McDonalds-or-Tesco-then" remark, it is already a fact that there are tons of people in jobs for which they're overqualified.

More than that, in fact. Many are so desperate that they are working for free [see the Rights for interns campaign] hoping to grab hold of a bone if it lands their way.

The only people who think a graduate can simply stroll into a Starbucks and land a job on the spot are obviously those who've never tried. Because if they did, they'd know that rejection is the order of the day. There are hundreds of thousands of graduates who are routinely turned down for low-skilled jobs, the assumption being that they "will not stick with it", that they're "overqualified" or "not humble enough" to put up with "less ambitious" tasks.

PREVIOUS CLICHES:
#2 "The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue".
#1 "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Cliches of 2010 #2

"The Royal Family brings in tourism revenue"

With the recent news that Prince William is to wed Kate Middleton, the supremely annoying cliche that "the-monarchy-generates-tourism" has made a swift comeback, particularly in reply to allegations that a Royal wedding in the middle of an age of austerity will strain the public purse.

For instance, former Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie proclaimed on last Thursday's BBC Question Time that "we need the tourist dollar [...] we need the Royal Family to help pay the bills". Needless to say, the Mail on Sunday reiterated the same argument today.

A few obvious questions, however, spring to mind.

Do these people seriously think tourists are booking flights and hotels to Britain only after they've double checked on Wikipedia that the country's still a monarchy?

Do they picture those gondoliers in Venice tearing their hair out in regret crying that: "oh, if only Italy had not become a Republic in 1946! The amount of extra revenue we missed out on!".

Would it be such a massive mental strain to work out that France has been a republic for 221 years and it's still the world's number one tourist destination?

Do people flock to Spain because their Head of State is called King Juan Carlos or because of the tourist attractions, history, scenery and weather?

Wouldn't tourists want to visit Buckingham Palace and other monuments anyway? How do you think it works?

"Oh, but it's not that, it's the mugs, the tea towels and the commemorative plates", the Sun, the Mail and the Express would probably tell you.

Except that you can work out for yourself that there will always be a specific type of tourist spending money on mugs, pens and commemorative plates, t-shirts and trinkets, key rings and the lot.

They sell them all around the world, and it matters not one jot if they have a royal family or not at the helm. Some tourists spend that money anyway, whether it's the Big Ben that is printed on that mug, Prince Charles' ears, the London Underground sign, the Eiffel Tower, Gaudi's lizard, or the Parthenon.

Get real. Open your eyes. You've got a brain. If you want to stick up for the Royal family, ditch the kool aid and use some better arguments.

Last week's cliche: "Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man".

Cliches of 2010 #1

"Iain Duncan Smith is a kind and honourable man"

Our new weekly feature on cliches starts with the phrase most associated with the Coalition's Grand Welfare Shake-Up.

Not just from Tory and Libservative opinionators (see Matthew D'Ancona's "Iain Duncan Smith is the man to give the poor back their work ethic"); a large swathe of centre-left commentators too decided that whenever they mention IDS, the person in charge of kicking the unemployed while they're down, they will describe him as "the man who seeks to liberate the poor and the needy" (Mary Riddell, the Telegraph) and "a fundamentally kind man who has spent years thinking about reform" (Jackie Ashley, the Guardian).

Yet how this man can suddenly be portrayed as Florence Nightingale reincarnate is one of the mysteries of the year.

Not long ago, this "kind and honourable man" dubbed homosexuality a "malign influence" and voted with the homophobes on any gay-bashing issue debated in Westminster.

Last month, the kind man callously invited the unemployed in Merthyr Tydfil to "take a one-hour bus journey" and look for work in Cardiff. Of course no-one had told the Coalition's Mother Teresa that 15,000 people in Cardiff are currently chasing just 1,700 jobs, while in Merthyr the situation is 1,670 unemployed against 39 job vacancies (all temporary and part-time, see here). But, hey, IDS means well, so that's alright.

Oh...and since we're at it. IDS says that his planned sanctions to force people who haven't found work for 12 months (even through no fault of their own) to sweep streets for £1-30 an hour 30 hours a week (or else hang'em and flog'em) is "making work pay". Can someone explain?