steepholm: (tree_face)
[personal profile] steepholm
In the week of Piggate it's hard to believe that people are still writing articles about whether a politician could be seriously damaged by a photograph of them doing anything as humdrum as hold a prize marrow (albeit Jeremy Corbyn does contrive to look reminiscent of a familiar Roman orchard deity in this one) - but over at the BBC, they still are.

What's been most striking about the whole affair, as so often, is the freedom that comes with membership of Cameron's class, particularly if this is combined (as it generally is) with attendance at Oxbridge. Neither Nick Clegg's arson nor George Osborne's apparent taste for dominatrix-and-coke have caused them lasting grief, and I doubt whether Cameron's placing of his penis in the mouth of a dead pig, even if proved true, will do him as much damage as the picture of Ed Miliband ineptly eating a bacon sandwich did him. (Had it been a live pig, or a dead human, things might have been different, but Cameron wisely steered between the Scylla of bestiality and the Charybdis of necrophilia, thus demonstrating his capacity to navigate the ship of state through choppy waters.)

To other people, however, such incidents stick like ticks. It seems appropriate to remember the fine old joke about the old man in the pub, looking back at his life with a certain bitterness:

"I taught three generations of children to read, but do they call me John the teacher? Not at all.

"I built a hundred houses for the people of the village, but do they call me John the homebuilder? They do not.

"I wrote many volumes of poems, but do they call me John the poet? Never."

*sups pint*

"I shag one sheep..."


Needless to say, this will never be Cameron's fate.


Oh, that Tolkien reference? Here's the smoking gun.

(no subject)

Date: 2015-09-28 07:40 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
And yet, when working-class lads steal a car temporarily to go for a joy-ride, no one says it's a silly prank - they get a criminal record!

As for whether we can still read Tolkien, that's between you and your conscience.

(no subject)

Date: 2015-09-28 07:52 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karinmollberg.livejournal.com
Of(f) course! Who do they think they are? ...Working class heroes? Now that we know, he was once a nothing but a bus driver, maybe we should see Tolkien as one and then one can still read him, right? I think...

(no subject)

Date: 2015-09-28 07:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Typically, he made a bourgeois thief the hero of his first published novel. Bilbo=A. J. Raffles.

(no subject)

Date: 2015-09-28 08:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karinmollberg.livejournal.com
You've got a point there, hehe!

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