Yesterday brought another round of the politics shows, and around the clumsily large, but no doubt high-tech, table at Sky News that is the centrepiece for Sophy Ridge on Sunday were a team of paper reviews including the loathsome Toby Young, whose contributions to such occasions have little intellectual value, but who gets invited along anyway, as he is a paid-up member of the Pundit Establishment.
Yes Tobes, bang to rights once again
Fellow paper reviewer Ian Dunt, with his characteristic Tigger-like confidence - which in his case is backed up by having actually done his homework on the subject - noted that much commentary on Brexit from those who had been so keen on the idea in the run-up to last year’s referendum has recently moved from the optimism of sunlit uplands to one of damage limitation. The EU’s Four Freedoms were a case in point.
Dunt homed in on the freedom - indeed, the right - to live, study, travel and work in any EU member state, which many young people cite as a reason for having voted to Remain. This, unless some kind of accommodation were made with the EU, would disappear, and as this freedom of movement is something the Government is committed to ending, the likelihood of any such accommodation being reached was remote.
Tobes was not happy about accepting this point, despite Dunt basing his argument in those pesky things called facts. No-one, he asserted, was suggesting that Britons ought not be able to live in other EU member states. This was mere whataboutery: what Dunt had described was the right to do so. Well, Tobes continued, he’d travelled to France before Britain was part of the EU, and so what?
Well, I too travelled to countries now EU member states before they acceded to membership, but this too misses the point: the freedom to travel is also a right, not something that may be allowed if the other country feels favourably disposed towards you. I also remember Spain before the end of the Falangist dictatorship, and am frequently thankful that that country, like Portugal and Greece, isn’t going back there any time soon.
Then Tobes tried to spin the idea that studying in other EU member states would not necessarily end, citing Norway being part of the Erasmus programme. Here, he truly took the biscuit: Norway, as any fule kno, is part of the Single Market and has as a consequence accepted the Four Freedoms, including freedom of movement. It also pays more per head of population to the EU than Britain.
He lied - and then boasted about it! Head, meet desk
Tobes was not impressing, but on he went: the Spanish Government wasn’t going to stop British citizens buying property in Marbella, was it? I mean, the property market would collapse! Again, the right to do something, and grudging acceptance until more well-off Scandinavians and Germans come along, are two very different things. But Tobes was duty-bound to rubbish a poll coming out of the LSE and quoted in the Observer.
Losing the freedoms to live, work, travel and study means what it says. For Toby Young to suggest otherwise is flagrantly, but predictably, dishonest. Which is why he later boasted about his performance on Twitter. He’s called Captain Bellend - because he’s a Bellend.
Father Jack Hackett: How did that gobshite get on the television?
ReplyDeleteLies are all that Brexiters have left. Brexit means Clusterfu*k. End of.
ReplyDeleteIs there any limit to what that fule doesn't no?......Take this:
ReplyDelete"...but on he went: the Spanish Government wasn’t going to stop British citizens buying property in Marbella, was it? I mean, the property market would collapse!..."
He apparently doesn't no the Spanish property market HAS COLLAPSED. It was a key component in causing the Current Capitalist Global Depression. Which in turn has eviscerated the Spanish economy. And caused "austerity" in Britain.
I try to find reasonable words to describe Young. But I keep coming back to the unavoidable fact that he's simply a fucking stupid cunt.
I had the delightful experience the day before Tobes' less than stellar performance on Sky, to witness him in full flow (blather) on the topic of edumacation. He's positioned himself as an expert on this subject, by dint of conning the government out of north of £20million smackers to create his very own St. Custard's in west London.
ReplyDeleteTurns out Tobes isn't an expert at all. His new job, as head of the Tories' New Schools Network (salary unknown) is supposed to be apolitical. But no. What we got was endless verbal diarrhoea about gromps (urghh) - his neologism for comprehensive grammar schools, and how they're bloody brilliant. Just bloody brilliant.
Well of course they're not. He lied about his own school's performance (it's not actually high achieving, merely average), he insisted that free schools are the only schools capable of addressing inequality (rates of permanent exclusion in WLFS eh Tobes?) and any criticism was laughed off as leftist carping.
Later, someone asked a question and affected not to know who Tobes was. His thunderous looks that someone could be so ignorant as to not possibly know who the maestro was were a joy to behold.
Toby Young demonstrated once again what an absolute prize twerp he is but neither he nor the estimable Dunt mentioned that while we will most likely still be able to live in EU countries (if we can afford it), we will no longer be covered by those countries' health systems, nor be eligible for pensions or benefits.
ReplyDelete