The Fabulous Destiny of Marked Accordingly

So the turkeys all voted for Christmas, while even those of us who thought we hadn’t soon found out that we had; and, by a piece of verbal legerdemain on the “Homosayswhat?” scale of sophistication, David Cameron and his hired goons were running amok in the corridors of power like the Joker in the Gotham Art Gallery. How did this happen? Who votes to have their money taken off them? Nobody – but Cameron was basically promising to do that all along. If there’s one area in which our right-wing trumps that of the Americans, it’s that ours are so pleased with their little schemes that they can’t help being essentially honest about them, and the number of times David Cameron has squirmed at televised questions rather than tell the outright lie which no-one would understand let alone subsequently remember is actually one of the touching little indicators that Britain isn’t really that bad; well, at least not yet.

Anyway, the Tories more or less admit that they’re going to fuck over everybody at the bottom of the payscales, the people whose votes they need in order to do anything, and still manage to find themselves in power. What’s going on?

Crafty is what it is. Nobody THINKS they’re at the bottom of the heap, or wants to think it. When Cameron talks tough about benefits and unproductive citizens, the middle class think of the working class, the working class of the unemployed, the unemployed of the immigrants, and the immigrants of the guests on The Jeremy Kyle Show, who seem to exist in a social heirarchy which exists not beneath but alternately to ours, in another dimension. These are the sponges from which the Tories are going to wring the deficit; Kev and Bev from Maidenhead will be shaken by their upside-down ankles until the economy’s awash with Nokias and Rizla papers. In this reality, the council estates of Lanarkshire are basically the Mysterious Cities of Gold, a troglodyte nation of swine and pearls; and those pearls belong to US now!

Sorry, Mario, but those pearls are in another castle. The dolescum get their £45.12 a week for not doing anything, yes; the executive directors get paid so much more for doing so much less that maybe it would be an IDEA to pay them for doing nothing, just to stop them wrecking up the place for a bit.

Anyway, that’s what shows like Jeremy Kyle are there for. They convince us that not only are we NOT on the bottom rung, but those who are are so contemptible as to deserve everything they get. Pull the ladder up, boys, we’re safe from the rising tide, and leave the poor bastards to drown in their DNA tests and paternity suits.

It’s all a lie, and a fairly transparent one at that, but what’s worst about it is that it’s such a nasty lie. Fifty years ago you could have shown an episode of The Jeremy Kyle Show at the Odeon and it would have been hailed as a masterpiece of satirical fantasy; no-one would ever treat ANYONE like that on national TV, and no-one would ever put up with it! Still and all, the pessimists would mutter, you could just about see it happening, although maybe only in America. Whatever else we might feel about Sachsgate, I think we can all agree that it’s a sorry joke that Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross should be pilloried for a couple of silly phone calls whilst on national daytime TV the most vulnerable secrets of our society’s most vulnerable members are revealed by a madman shouting and screaming at them like a demented audition reel for American Psycho.

So good for Kev for chucking an envelope at him. He might not have been able to explain it, but the sudden realisation that what was happening was an affront to his self-respect was probably the most positive thing ever to happen on Jeremy Kyle. How funny and how shameful it all is, and not for any of the reasons that the audience might think.