Littlejohn And The Foot In His Mouth

If anyone wondered how it could be possible to sit by the pool within a gated compound in Florida and pontificate reliably on events in cities around the UK, they could not have read the tedious outpourings of the Daily Mail’s talentless churnalist Richard Littlejohn, who appears to do just that.

Sad to say, though, Dick gets his news filtered through the warped prism of the paper that allows him to trouser close to a million notes a year, and so the pontificating is that much less reliable as a result. Hence he describes the ranting earlier this week by Max “Hitler” Hastings and Mad Mel Phillips as “eloquent”, rather than wayward, incoherent and deranged.

Million notes a year, guv? Issa riot, innit?!?

But readers are left in no doubt as to what Dick thinks about the rioting: “this is the inevitable outcome of 30 years of Left-wing social experimentation, aimed deliberately at destroying the social fabric of our country”. Margaret Thatcher clearly has a lot to answer for.

It would help, though, if Dick could get his story straight. “Most of them [rioters] don’t get up before midday, except on the mornings they have to sign on the dole ... they’d rather live on benefits or the proceeds of gang crime”. Got that? Then forget it: “Many of those who have already appeared in court are opportunist thieves who hold down proper jobs”. Make your mind up, Dicky boy.

The consistency extends to the usual carping about broadcast media: “Why have producers been prepared to allow young thieves to shelter their identities beneath face masks?” protests Dick, alongside a photo of an alleged looter emerging from a supermarket wearing, er, a face mask.

And which of those broadcast media outlets have been behaving badly? This is the Daily Mail, so that question answers itself: “The BBC and Channel 4, in particular, have been anxious to portray these violent thugs and looters as victims”. They have? I watched all those news bulletins and missed it. Silly me.

The statistics marshalled by Dick are equally dodgy: “Labour closed more than 500 Police stations, one for every week it was in office” for instance. Labour was in office for over 650 weeks, and closures started well before they came to power: there were 630 closures in the last decade of the 20th Century.

With all that time lounging by his pool counting those piles of dosh, it’s a pity that Dick can’t do any better. But this formulaic garbage is exactly what his legendarily foul mouthed editor wants, and even manages to suggest that politicians are more concerned about phone hacking than those ordinary people Littlejohn talks about, yet, like that editor of his, never seems to encounter.