Stupidity dressed up as humour ...

The Conservative party has been through considerable soul searching and has described itself as appeargin to be 'the nasty party' ... none of this has been in jest, yet the epithet has struck something in the national consciousness perhaps leaving the Conservatives with even greater difficulty in the recent election ... but that is a post for another time.

The day before yesterday, John McDonnell, a candidate for leadership of the Labour party, 'joked' that he would have liked to have gone back to the 80's to kill Margaret Thatcher.  To put this into perspective, there was a real conflict going on in the 80's when people were trying to kill the Prime Minister - and this is thought to be a suitable topic for a 'joke'?  The reality is that it isn't funny ... and it rather displays the hatred that some of our politicians feel for their opponents; although I have to say that I have never actually heard a British  politician even joking about killing his politicial opponents before. 

Today, we have reports about a fox going into a house and attaking children asleep in their cots - for parents of young children who live in areas where urban foxes are a pest, this is not news that makes us calm!  Yet we now read a report in Liberal Conspiracy that treats the affair with inappropriate humour- see here.  I particularly object to the links to immigration and to the unpleasant videoing of violence for posting on websites ...

It is true that the reports only suggest that the animal that attacked the children was a fox; there is no certainty (save for the parents, who were probably rather more concerned for their daughters than for identifying the animal to satisfy the prurient humour of bloggers).  Anyone who has any knowledge of foxes will tell you that this was not typical behaviour of foxes - and I have to say that when I first heard of the story I was very doubtful. But the story is what it is and the children remain in hospital as a result of the attack and our prayers and thoughts should be with them and their family in the hope that they recover quickly.

But is it appropriate now to treat this topic with humour?  The reality, I suspect, lies in the prejudices of the bloggers themselves - to contrast their approach, have a look their reaction to the completely inappropriate video that attempts to treat the incident between the IDF and those that wanted to run the blokade of Gaza with what the authors presumably thought was humour - see here. 

What these events reveal to me, yet again, is that there are those in the Labour party and those that support the 'left' who fail to understand that people can disagree with them without rancour and that the debates that we will have will be onsiderably improved if the personal animus is left at the door - 'joking' about killing your opponents is not funny; given the history of organisations of the left with dictatorships and the number of opponents that these dictatorships killed, it could be considered rather threatening!