A Tale of Two Letters

Since I've been walking to walk for the last month, I've unsurprisingly stopped reading the Evening Standard. And a good thing that is too, being as it is the printed minutes of Boris Johnson's campaign headquarters. But on Monday I did pick up a copy - a shitty journey back from Guildford left me feeling like catching the fastest tube back home rather than bothering to walk.

A couple of "opinions" on the letters page caught my eye. Why am I only writing about these now? Only the voices in my head know why. And they won't tell me.

Here they are [emphasis mine]:

Light entertainment at the BBC in the Eighties was a very different place from today - with a culture centred on the bar, full of characters and an almost anarchic sense of fun, with the producers themselves often larking about. 

I recall the rumours about Savile but they also flew around about lots of other people, including BBC executives. Isn't there the risk of everyone with an axe to grind now jumping on the bandwagon? A well-known actor threw a bacon roll at me once: should I launch into print and say in hindsight it was an assault? And how can George Entwistle, a director-general who has been in post five minutes, chair an enquiry on the issue?

The BBC has been showing us how Britain fed itself during the war. I can only assume this is government propaganda bracing us for the shortage of land caused by its reckless immigration policy.

I play a game called "Two a Day" with the Metro and the Standard. Every single day there are two letters (or texts) which are so far to the right they're off the lunatic fringe. And Monday was no exception. But it was special in how hard these two people had to work to get their absurd ideas out.

Jeanette Eccles from N7 had to compare child molestation to having a bacon sandwich thrown at her in order to dismiss the possibility of investigating the Saville affair. And Vanessa of no permanent address had to spend the last few years ignoring the fact that net immigration is negative (that is: more people are leaving than coming in) just in order to hold on to her opinion for this long. Then she had to come up with one of the most awesome non sequiturs I've seen in the Standard since they had Theresa May write an opinion piece about terrorists.

Congratulations Jeanette and Vanessa. Your prize for today's piece of gibbering, frothy-mouthed hatred is my ire. Go wallow in it.