Dick of the Year 2011
Posted on January 1, 2012 by Admin | 4 Comments
Voting is now open.
Please vote using the poll in the sidebar. Voting is open to anyone but if we suspect anyone is trying to game the system we reserve the right to move to a more closed electorate. Voters may vote for up to 3 candidates. Voting will remain open until midnight on Tuesday (i.e. between Tuesday and Wednesday). The winner will simply be the candidate who receives the most votes. A full run down and the final result will be announced on Wednesday.
Dick of the Year – Superintendent Nelson Telfer
Posted on January 1, 2012 by Luther Blissett | 1 Comment
This nomination comes from two of the Glasgow University occupiers, writing anonymously and in a personal capacity.
Superintendent Nelson Telfer of Strathclyde Police is far from the most well known of 2011’s Dick of the Year nominations. Indeed, the height of his fame came on 22 March, when he appeared on STV’s evening news. His mission: to deny that that day’s eviction of the ‘Free Hetherington’ occupation at Glasgow University – an operation involving up to 80 officers, a helicopter and a dog unit alongside the university’s own security – had been anything other than a proportionate and orderly response to a situation that was rapidly spiralling out of control. Only one arrest had been made, he insisted, ‘and that was after the incident’. No people had been injured, he claimed – despite the fact that one student had left in an ambulance suffering concussion. Allegations of police brutality were ‘absolute nonsense’ – despite 15 peaceful occupiers being forcibly (and illegally) manhandled from an, at that time, seven week old occupation.
It’s true that only one student had been lifted on the day – but only because three others had been earlier ‘de-arrested’ by Telfer himself, who marched into the university building where they were being detained and announced it in an effort to de-escalate the situation, with ‘700 students’ gathered outside by this point. So it an inspired act of doublethink that saw Nelson appear on STV that night claiming a just and proportionate response to the situation. Particularly when, at 7am the next morning, two of those arrested – one a qualified nurse and the other a school student – were then taken back into custody and hit with ludicrous charges of assaulting police officers.
At the uni, meanwhile, the Free Hetherington was back in the hands of the occupiers: following the eviction, an inspiring show of solidarity saw hundreds of the gathered onlookers force their way into the university’s palatial senate rooms, and in a desperate bid to eject them from there, uni management were forced to concede on the re-occupation of the Hetherington. Fortunately for the three arrestees, their court appearance the following month was cancelled, and all are currently ‘liberated’, although the Crown still has a few months left to press the charges again if they desire.
In June, several hundred Strathclyde University students joined a march against the cutting of four departments. Just as it was reaching its end, the police decided to move in, arresting a student for shouting through a megaphone. A lengthy stand-off ensued, as dozens of students blockaded police vans from leaving, during which another student was arrested and several were assaulted, one obtaining a black eye. By now you probably won’t be shocked to hear who the officer in charge of that day’s policing was.
Two days later, he cropped up again as the officer in charge of the anti-rape ‘Slutwalk’ in Glasgow – in a policing operation that saw ‘several police vans mass around the square, along with four officers on horseback, a helicopter, undercover officers and others using video cameras’. Apparently this was because they didn’t know whether there’d be ‘3000 or 30,000 protestors’; in the end there was about 200, mostly young women on their first demo. But it provided a neat opportunity for an exercise in intimidation and intelligence gathering, and, in an unprecedented move, Nelson rounded the day off by reporting two organisers to the Procurator Fiscal for organising an unauthorised march.
Across the country, this year has witnessed political policing of a style and ferocity unseen on the British mainland for 20 years or more. This trend has been particularly pronounced in Glasgow where the police seem to have embarked on a strategy of pinning down as many charges against as many of those active in the anti-cuts movement as possible. Let’s be clear – policing of this kind is not the doing of one officer, but a systematic attempt to crush the emerging movements against austerity. But while the orders may come from on high, few have taken on this role with such gleeful arrogance as our nomination for Dick of the Year, Superintendent Nelson Telfer.
Dick of the Year: David Bahati MP
Posted on December 31, 2011 by Matt Hanley | No Comments
I’d like to nominate Ugandan MP David Bahati for Dick of the Year. His initial dickishness should have seen him qualify for 2009′s award, but he deserves it in 2011 due to the consequences of his actions two years ago.
On 14 October 2009, with alleged financial and legal support from The Family, a powerful Christian evangelical political organisation in the US, Bahati submitted a private members’ bill called the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (“Kill the Gays bill”) in the Ugandan Parliament. The Bill, if passed, would see repeat homosexual offenders put to death; people executed for having sex with people of their own gender.
Under the Bill you would also face prison for simply failing to report knowledge of a person who is gay.
Put simply, Bahati’s Bill will enshrine and mandate state homophobia.
Bahati has justified the Bill by with outlandish claims that millions of dollars are being used in Uganda to recruit children into somehow being gay. He insists that people are coming from abroad to invest in Uganda to recruit children into homosexuality.
The truth is that Bahati and his fellow supporters of the Kill the Gays Bill are redirecting onto LGBT people the anger and frustration of Uganda’s economic and social problems, and successfully whipping up violent homophobic hysteria.
This hysteria led quickly to terrible and murderous consequences.
In April 2009, a Ugandan newspaper printed the names of suspected homosexuals, and another printed tips on how to identify gays. In late 2010, another published a story featuring a list of the nation’s 100 “top” gays and lesbians with their photos and addresses. Next to the list was a yellow strip with the words “hang them”. One of the photos was that of leading Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato.
Two months later at the beginning of 2011, and qualifying Bahati for Dick of the Year, David Kato was found beaten to death, battered about the head with a hammer. As if not shocking enough, such is the institutionalised homophobia resulting from Bahati’s actions that the Ugandan police refused to acknowledge the hate crime and handled the case as a simple robbery.
As for the Kill the Gays Bill now, the Ugandan parliament adjourned in May 2011 without voting on the bill. Bahati stated that he intended to re-introduce the bill in the new parliament. Far from throwing out the bill as any decent parliament should, Bahati made sure that in October 2011 the Kill the Gays Bill debate was re-opened.
So, in memory of the courageous campaigner David Kato and the countless other LGBT people persecuted or murdered, David Bahati MP is my Dick of the Year.’
Dick of the Year – Dave Hartnett
Posted on December 31, 2011 by Alyson Macdonald | No Comments
This is (probably) the final nomination for 2011′s Dick of the Year award. We will open voting tomorrow.
Nobody expects The Telegraph to like the taxman, but when they’re criticising him for not charging big businesses enough tax, you know he’s got to be pretty dodgy.
Dave Hartnett, the Permanent Secretary for Tax at HMRC, is well known to everyone who has ever been on a UK Uncut action as the man who let Vodafone, Goldman Sachs, and countless other corporations off their tax bills. A government report has found that £25 billion went uncollected, although some campaigners think the figure could be much higher.
Hartnett is also known as the most wined and dined civil servant in Whitehall, after having received corporate hospitality on 107 occasions between 2007 and 2009 – that’s an average of just over once a week. But with what they’re saving on tax, I’m sure these companies can afford to fund these little perks without passing on any undue cost to their shareholders.
Under Hartnett’s leadership, HMRC have operated in a culture of secrecy, which has included attempting to sack and prosecute Osita Mba for reporting the possibly illegal tax deals to the National Audit Office. When he was summoned to appear in front of the Public Accounts Committee, Hartnett refused to give full and open answers to MPs, claiming that the information was confidential. An HMRC spokesperson later criticised the PAC report for being “based on partial information, inaccurate opinion and some misunderstanding of facts”, apparently without any sense of irony.
But Dave Hartnett’s worst crime wasn’t the lack of transparency or accepting some free dinners – it was the part he played in making the cuts seem necessary. It suited the Coalition to have taxes under-collected, because if the government has less money coming in, that makes it seem more believable that the country can’t afford decent public services. All of the money that HMRC didn’t collect could have been used to fund schools, the NHS, social care, disability benefits, or any of the hundreds of other worthwhile things that have been affected by the austerity measures; but it’s not, because it’s still in the pockets of people who were already rich to begin with.
Despite calls for his resignation, Hartnett has stayed on in his £160K-a-year job, although he will retire in summer 2012 (at the age of 61, a luxury few other civil servants can afford). The title of Dick of the Year might be a fitting send off for him.
Building to Win: Reaching Beyond the International Anti-Capitalist Elite
Posted on December 30, 2011 by Adam Ramsay | 4 Comments
I was recently asked to speak about the infrastructure of progressive movements at the Bank of Ideas – part of Occupy London. This is roughly what I said. This piece first appeared in the Occupied Times.
I recently had the good fortune to interview Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason at a comedy gig. His message wasn’t funny. He drew analogies with the 1930s – the descent to fascism – and with Europe’s failed revolutions of 1848: “When you get home, Google 1849” he told us “the bourgeoisies turned on the working class and shot them”.
The world order is falling apart. What comes next we don’t yet know. But we do know this: The road we take in the coming months and years could well define the shape of society for much of the rest of our lives. And we also know this: the last three decades have seen an entrenchment of the power of elites. They control more of the money than they have for a century. And with this money they control the bond markets. And so they can, and do, bring down governments who stray too far from the flock. And they rarely need to – the number of lobbyists in Washington DC has gone up roughly a hundredfold since 1970. Similar statistics could be cited for capital cities across the Western world. At the same time, megalith corporations have monopolised the media. With control of the means of cultural and ideological production comes an ability to manufacture consent. And with this consent, our social solidarity has been smashed. The 2011 British Social Attitudes Survey saw how our society has become atomised, how we look out for each other less and less, how we will stand together less and less.
But this is not the primary way in which the power of elites has grown. Perhaps most impressive of all has been the assault they have launched on the infrastructure through which British people traditionally organise, have traditionally secured some measure of control.
Famously of course, trade unions have faced attacked. The most obvious front in this attack has been legal – the banning of secondary pickets, the attempt through the courts in recent years to make legal strike action effectively impossible. But along with these, we must remember the impact of structural unemployment – introduced in the 1970s to ‘control inflation’: by making people fearful of joining a union and negotiating for higher wages. And we must remember the impact of ‘flexible labour markets’ – if I only work for a company for two years, is it worth my while organising my colleagues to push for better conditions which will probably only be secured after I have left?
Political parties used too to be a key structure through which people could organise – local meetings provided space to discuss together what we wanted for our future. Canvassing ensured those ideas could at least to some extent be shared face to face without the mediation of media or market. But as the key decisions which impact our lives have been privatised – from what rent we pay to what type of job we are likely to have – party membership has dropped. And in the case of Labour, those who did remain were seen by elites to be too radical. And so, with fewer members or an unwillingness to trust them, much of the face to face doorstep interaction once the indivisible unit of electoral politics was replaced with Philip Gould’s focus groups and Peter Mandleson’s media manipulation. And so the media entrenched its role as the mediators of conversations about our collective will.
The descent of parties and unions coincided not only with the rise of the markets, but also the growth of professional activist NGOs. Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Amnesty International etc – mostly founded through the 1960s and early 1970s – perhaps began to fill some of the space left on the left. Their growth came not just from the emerging gap, but also from a combination of changes to society and new technologies: the baby-boomers’ graduation from the expansion of higher education meant they didn’t identify as industrial working class and instead took up the new left liberation struggles in the 60s. At the same time zip-codes (USA) and post codes (UK) were introduced, allowing direct mail marketing and recruitment, and mass standing banking order technology was developed, making the funding of centralised offices much easier.
But whilst some of these organisations have local groups on the Margaret Mead model (“never let anyone tell you that a small group of committed people can’t change the world”), they could be accused of trying to sway those with power more than they organise those who need it: rather than supporting and empowering groups to mobilise their communities and workplaces around their needs, the standard NGO model involves producing a report, lobbying for its policy recommendations, and getting local groups to provide evidence of public support for these calls: compared to mass political parties tramping down our streets to knock on doors and to trade unions organising in our work places, there is little people power here.
In some corners of America, and in London to an extent, something else has risen – attempts at community organisation a la Saul Alinsky: piecing together community groups to encourage them all to stand together and face their oppressors – puting power before policy. But as Thatcherism has ripped apart the society she claimed didn’t exist, these community groups have weakened. With fewer and fewer attending any kind of local meeting this model of organising communities becomes harder.
The last decade has seen a new flavour of political organisation. On the one hand, the generation who first took to the streets to march against the Iraq invasion – who trace our politics to the 1999 Battle of Seattle – have mostly not joined these NGOs. The need for central offices storing mass databases weakens once an email list can do what once required a week of envelope stuffing. A generation who do not expect to live or work in the same place for more than a couple of years is unlikely to join an organisation for life. And as “all the stories on the news are merging into one big story” campaigning for life on any one of the manifestations of neo-liberal oppression seems to miss the core story.
Instead, many of us have graduated into self-organised direct action groups with no formal hierarchy or central office. Plane Stupid, Climate Camp, UK Uncut, Occupy London and countless autonomous affinity groups and actions have been demographically skewed towards today’s twenty-somethings, the ‘jilted generation’. These groups are media savvy, fleet of foot, delivering more than just the A-B march against the Iraq war where so many began their ideological journey. They are increasingly providing space for media circus, and for education. Sometimes they succeed in directly confronting power. But their lack of formal hierarchy does not mean there aren’t key organisers: there are – a few hundred people. The numbers who participate – thousands – are surely not yet enough to alone genuinely secure structural changes to the way our country is organised.
On the other hand, we have seen steps towards organisations who attempt mass mobilisation online – 38 Degrees, Get-up, Move-On, Avaaz. These allow hundreds of thousands to use the smallest possible interactions to ‘fix’ the biggest problems “click here to stop climate change”. But despite some noble intentions to make themselves democratic, they cannot hand the means of campaign production to those who wish to take action for themselves.
My worry is this: our organisations are top heavy. We are attempting to influence an increasingly stratified society by mirroring it. We have little space where people can go, on a regular basis, and discuss with members of their community what they want for it and how they will get it. As the systemic walls come tumbling down, our elites will throw at us everything they have. And when they do, we must know what it is that we are fighting for. And we must be willing to stand together, to hold together, and to carry on fighting for it – as a movement not built of a media savvy anti-capitalist elite, but of millions.
The trades unions are already the true base of that movement. But we always need to organise outside our workplaces as well as in them. Local anti-cuts groups are growing, with 300 odd listed on the web-hub False Economy. But these too are not yet enough, and do not have the support they need to come together and stand together.
And if we are to win, then we will need to learn the lessons of Alinsky and of Amnesty, remember the best of the techniques of the political parties, and take advantage of the changes in technology and in learning of the last 40 years. And we need to build from the scraps of what Thatcher trashed and turn them into something new, collective, and unbeatable. Because it’s not 1848, and it’s not the 1930s. It’s 2011. And whilst they may have smashed our organisations, we must remember the one advantage that people’s movements have always had: we are many, they are few.
Dick of the Year – Andrew Lansley
Posted on December 29, 2011 by Tom | 5 Comments
This is a nomination for Bright Green’s Dick of the Year 2011 award. To submit your own nomination email around 200 words to editors (at) brightgreenscotland (dot) org by the end of Friday. Voting will open on New Year’s Day.
In the second year of the coalition, Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill, one of the biggest top down reforms of the NHS since its inception in 1948, rolled it’s way through the commons, and is most of the way through the Lords, delayed only by Lansley’s refusal to release a register of risks created by the health bill. In 2008, Cameron had said there would be an end to top down reforms of the NHS.
The bill is opposed by all the medical professionals, with the BMA recently reiterating it’s complete opposition to it. 38 Degrees’ petition stands at 495,000 signatures. “Andrew Lansley – Greedy, Andrew Lansley – Tosser” became a regular chant on demos, as MC NextGen’s Lansley rap racked up over 450,000 views on YouTube. This song remains one of the most insightful criticisms of both Lansley and the health bill.
Only private healthcare companies like the bill, but Lansley repeatedly says this is not about privatisation, then over christmas announces that the health bill will allow NHS hospitals to sell up to 49% of bedspace to private patients in order to raise revenue.
Meanwhile, Lansley is presiding over “efficiency savings” of £20bn over 5 years from the most efficient healthcare system in the world . With cuts being made, how many hospitals will be able to operate without selling more and more bedspace to private patients who are paying to be seen more quickly?
Before the election Cameron said “we’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” and then they have done exactly the opposite. 4 out of 5 doctors say those cuts are affecting patient care.
So for accelerating the job begun by Labour when they created foundation hospitals, to seek to run down the NHS in preparation for privatisation, to eventually remove and destroy one of the greatest achievements of the UK, a universal healthcare system accessible regardless of wealth, which is ranked amongst the best in the world, and swap it for a US system which will cost us all more, for worse care, I am nominating Andrew Lansley for dick of the year.
Why I’m using my tax rebate to sue the taxman
Posted on December 29, 2011 by Adam McGibbon | 2 Comments
A couple of days before Christmas, a letter came in the mail for me. It was for Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, telling me I was due a tax rebate of £80.89.
Coming in the festive season, there was a few things I was considering spending it on. In the end, I decided to gamble my £80.89 in the hope of getting back £10 million. I donated the money HMRC gave me to UK Uncut Legal Action, who are planning to sue HMRC for letting Goldman Sachs off paying £10 million in tax.
Goldman had been dragged through the British courts for years over a failed tax avoidance scheme, involving all of their London bankers being employed by a subsidiary company in the British Virgin Islands (a tax haven east of Puerto Rico) then ‘seconded’ to London. Due to pay £40 million, HMRC’s Permanent Secretary, Dave Hartnett, allegedly ‘shook hands’ on an agreement with Goldman to let them off £10 million of the bill.
Although this controversy (and some creative protest) has since forced Hartnett to resign, and the spotlight is now on this particular deal, this is the absolute tip of the iceberg when it comes to corporate tax avoidance. George Osborne letting Vodafone off £6bn. Google making £6 billion in the UK and paying just £8 million tax on it, then blaming the UK’s ‘weak tax laws’. Serial tax avoider Phillip Green being appointed as a government adviser on slashing public spending. And that’s just a few examples.
Estimates of total tax avoidance in the UK range from £100-120bn a year. The Treasury suggested in a leaked document in 2006 that it could be even more than that. Nicholas Shaxon’s ‘Treasure Islands’ demonstrates just how much of an industry, a profession, that avoiding tax is to these people. The mind boggles at the wrongs you could right with that kind of money.
It’s been said time and again, but quite simply, the treatment of big companies by the UK’s tax collecting authority blows one of the most obvious holes in the rationale behind huge cuts to public services and regressive taxation on the most vulnerable, such as VAT increases. The hardship, suffering and yes, death, being inflicted upon the people of the UK right now is entirely unnecessary and could be avoided if big companies paid their fair share.
Taking on HMRC isn’t simple, of course. UK Uncut Legal Action’s lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, are doing it on a ‘no-win-no-fee’ basis, but if they lose, you can bet they’ll have to pay HMRC’s legal costs. Branding it ‘the people’s court case,’ they are looking for donations. The legal challenge is already raising awareness – imagine the shock waves if it succeeded. The cuts must be opposed in courtrooms as well as on the streets and in ballot boxes.
If you can spare anything at all – or have just received a tax rebate and enjoy irony as much as I do – then please give whatever you can. You can donate here: http://ukuncutlegalaction.org.uk/
Women Of The Year 2011 (No Pandas)
Posted on December 28, 2011 by Reni Eddo-Lodge | 5 Comments
As Christmas day passes and the population spends a few days in the doldrums waiting for New Year’s Eve, journalists across the land begin to hastily gather information and evidence for those vaguely irritating ‘end-of-the-year’ lists. The BBC got in rather early, with its ‘Faces of 2011’. However, something wasn’t quite right with the women chosen. The inclusion of a panda as the most newsworthy woman of December 2011 quickly sparked justifiable outrage from people who believe women are human.
Let’s not fool ourselves; the BBC’s list was less about women achievers, and more about newsworthy women of the year. A browse through the men’s version confirms this, with Paul McMullan, ex News of the World journalist, featuring as Mr July. Granted, he did get a lot of press coverage, and there is nothing admirable about hacking phones- but he wasn’t replaced with an animal.
The inclusion of Sweetie the panda isn’t the only slap in the face to the women. The human females on the list are regarded newsworthy for getting married, or being victims of awful crimes, or being a figment of someone’s imagination, whereas the male list didn’t include men who were famous for getting married (not to mention the fact that they were all human). This just isn’t good enough. I’ve decided to compile an alternative list. In no particular order, I give you, the newsworthy women 2011!
1. Sarah Stevenson
Before #pandagate the BBC’s Sports Personality of the year list conveniently forgot that women existed. But here is a notable British sportswomen who didn’t received half as much press coverage as she deserved in 2011. World Tae Kwon Do champion Sarah Stevenson started training in in the sport at the age of seven and has collected 10 medals since then – six of them gold.
2. The women who started Slutwalk
When a Canadian policeman warned a group of female students not to dress like ‘sluts’ in order to avoid being raped, his throwaway comment inspired those women to spark one a worldwide feminist march movement. With its roots in Toronto, Slutwalk touched nerves of feminists and non-definers alike, with thousands turning out on the streets all year long to rail against victim-blaming.
3. Aung San Suu Kyi
It is mind boggling that Suu Kyi didn’t make the original list. The Burmese politician was detained under house arrest for a total of 15 years, and has been campaigning for democracy in Burma for most of her adult life. This year, her party, the National League for Democracy, announced it would return to politics after boycotting the last Burmese elections in 2010, with Suu Kyi running for parliament.
4. Pauline Pearce
Pauline, or the Hackney Heroine, keeps her place on the list. Her impassioned monologue in the eye of the August riots cut through the chaos, captivating rolling news audiences with a sense of clarity that could hardly be comprehended through the images of burning buildings and shattered glass.
5. Mona Eltahawy
One of the woman who tweeted the revolution. Mona Eltahawy has not only won numerous awards for her journalism- this year she tweeted the Egyptian revolution from Tahrir Square whilst millions of us were glued to our laptop screens. In November she was beaten and sexually assaulted by Egyptian security forces. She tweeted the moment, and told the full story to The Guardian, further exposing Egypt’s oppressive regime.
6. Christine Lagarde
If we’re talking column inches, it would be impossible not to mention Lagarde. Christine took over from Dominique Strauss-Khan has managing director of the International Monetary Fund in July 2011. Now she’s navigating the European financial crisis. She was also the first ever female chair of an international law firm.
7. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee & Tawakkol Karman
The three women who jointly shared this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Sirleaf, Gbowee and Karmen are from Yemen and Liberia and were awarded the prize for their amazing services to global feminist activism. The women were awarded the prize in December – the same month that the BBC saw fit to dedicate the most newsworthy woman of the month to a panda.
8. Kim Kardashian
Reality star Kim Kardashian has done more to expose the absurdity of the notion ‘sanctity of marriage’ than she may realise. Her farcical 72 day marriage racked up substantial column inches, with many dismissing it at a publicity stunt. Situated in the middle of 2011’s continuous worldwide fights for equal marriage, it also caused many to question just exactly what was so special about marriage between a man and a woman that had to be so viciously discriminatory.
9. Nafissatou Diallo
Originally appearing on the BBC’s list, Nafissatou Diallo retains her place on the alternative list not for ‘causing a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic’, as the BBC’s Bob Chaundy so eloquently put it – but for speaking up against rape and sexual assault in the face of money, power, press intrusion, and horrendous adversity.
10. Angela Merkel
Merkel is the first ever female Chancellor or Germany, Forbes’ number 1 most powerful woman, and is often regarded as the leader of the European Union. If that’s not newsworthy, I don’t know what is.
Dick of the Year – David Starkey
Posted on December 28, 2011 by Liz Ely | No Comments
This is a nomination for Bright Green’s Dick of the Year 2011 award from Liz Ely. To submit your own nomination email 200 or so words to editors (at) brightgreenscotland (dot) org. Nominations will close and voting begin at New Year.
Q. Why would you deem it appropriate to ask a Tudor historian to talk aboutyouth uprisings in contemporary Britain?
A. ummm I’m not sure, he’s an old rich white man?
David Starkey had displayed early signs of cockishness back in 2009 when he complained that poor old Henry the 8th was being subjugated because some historians focus on the women he murdered – but it was in 2011 when his dickish nature came to a head on national TV with his notorious ‘whites have become black’ analysis of the youth uprisings this summer. On Newsnight he argued that the cause of the 2011 riots was patois, rap and black culture, as if these things are inherently violent (he’s obviously never watched Rastamouse). Throughout his appearance on Newsnight he makes one objectionable racist comment after another, earning him what I feel is a well deserved nomination for 2011 dick of the year.
Not Dick of the Year – Jeremy Clarkson
Posted on December 27, 2011 by Admin | 2 Comments
This is not a nomination for our Dick of the Year award by Roddy Shippin. If you want to nominate someone (or un-nominate them) email 2-300 words to editors (at) brightgreenscotland (dot) org.
Many worthy candidates have already been put forward for this most prestigious of phallic-themed humiliations, but rather than nominate another I would like to recommend a name for dis-inclusion: Jeremy Clarkson.
Now, before I’m drowned in a sea of online rage, I want to make it clear that this is no plea for mercy. I’m aware of the racism, the misogyny, the general stream of outrageous, politically incorrect opinions which he has for money; these charming little foibles have, if anything, intensified over the past year. To sum up: Jeremy Clarkson is, in the immortal words of Elvis McGonagall, an arse. Therefore, aside from disqualification on strict anatomical grounds, he would seem like an ideal candidate, a frontrunner, the ’08 Obama of the ’11 Dick race…
But think about it: bestowing on Clarkson the title of “Dick of the year 2011″ is exactly what They want you to do! Stewart Lee’s afore-linked skewering touches on an important point – Our Jez is, in essence, a pantomime villain. He performs a function similar to the American “Shock Jocks” (Limbaugh, Beck, Stern etc etc) – dispensers of poison, to a man, but not its manufacturers. Clarkson may, for example, make hilarious reference to the shooting of Public Sector strikers, but he’s not responsible for the vicious programme of cuts that prompted the strikes in the first place.
I don’t mean that Mr. C should be taken lightly – he may be a bogeyman, but still needs to be picked, rolled & flicked (though hopefully not licked…) at the first opportunity; I merely want to pay due respect to the gravity of this award. Clarkson, like an artist setting up his easel opposite your burning flat, is there to draw your fire. It’s the real arsonists that we should be focusing on.
Dick of the Year
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