MopTop Boris Offends the “City of Culture”
Boris Johnson, the shaggy Tory spokesman on Culture has, through his greatly over-rated organ, the Spectator, accused an entire city of wallowing in victimhood.
What a prat! The death of Mr Bigley was an atrocity. Regardless of the inadvisability of chasing fast bucks in a war zone, nobody deserves having their head cut off by Islamofascists. If people in Liverpool have some empathy for their fellow man and a wish to express that publicly, that is a very warm-hearted and genuine human reaction to human suffering. I remember in the 1980s, Bob Geldof organised a powerfully moving campaign in aid of people suffering in a far-off land. How much stronger the identification must be when you have something in common with the one who is suffering.
I am sure there are many thousands of people in Liverpool who do not see themselves as victims, but what is wrong if they do feel a twinge of compasssion for someone who has been humiliated and then murdered by Islamist fanatics?
By condemning a whole city of people for the emotional indulgences of a few, the Spectator leader article has demonstrated a collectivist mentality that demeans that publication. If Boris Johnson was really serious in his apology, it was a major error of judgement to have published the article in the first place. Michael Howard needs to reconsider his appointment of Johnson to any position of responsibility. If the article was merely clumsily worded, (and it did make some strong points about emotional excess), then Boris should have stuck to his guns and justified the article. His failure to do so, shows a lack of resove – a quality that is desperately needed if we are ever to rid ourselves of this pernicious Government.
Either way it is a serious failure.
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