Well, well, well, what do you know? You wait over a month for a blog entry and then two come along at once. TRAROTL is the blogging equivalent of buses, something which Will Self so eloquently whined back when I met him at a drinks reception in 2010.
Regular readers will be familiar with me analysing stupid letters that have been sent in to my local rag, The Sloppy Star, for many years now, so this blog entry is something an ickle bit different. On Page 8 of yesterday's Slop we have a column written by a man called Mr Nigel Hastilow (more on him later. Much more) which is possibly the worst thing I've ever read. I know I say that every week but, seriously. Let's go:
Complaints by us lefties wouldn't be right
That's the title, and it's one that caught my eye because, based on his previous muck, there's no way this dude is a "leftie".
There's nothing sinister about it. I am left-handed and the world's against me. Who can I sue?
Ah. Left-handed.
It's the ginger-whingers who finally convinced me there must be money in it.
As you read this column, please note one thing - I'm left handed. Yes, I'm left-handed, and even I think this is the shittiest thing I've ever seen since Lord Charles Shitty took a shit on a shitting toilet.
In Milton Keynes.
So, a few people call you carrot-top? Get over it. You really don't know what discrimination's all about. Try being left-handed, cack-handed or simply gauche.
Could you excuse me for a moment?
*taps out unnecessarily long phone number*
HEAVEN: "Thank you for phoning Heaven. For the Big Man Himself, press 1. For a guest, press 2. For a saint, press 3. To be re-directed downstairs, press 666."
HEAVEN: "Thank you for pressing...2...you are now on-hold. Your call is very important to us. Please hold."
They're playing "Abide with Me". Don't you just hate on-hold music?
ST PETER: "Hello?"
ME: "Rosa Parks please. Fifth floor, I believe."
ST PETER: "One moment."
"Little Donkey" now, for fuck sake.
ROSA PARKS: "Hello?"
ME: "Rosa, it's me, Ewar!"
ROSA: "Yes?"
ME: "We met before, a few years ago. I was just wondering if you could tell me your story, you know, the bus one. I love to hear it."
ROSA: "Of course! Well, one day I was sitting on a bus, and, you know, there were awful problems at the time. This was 1950s deep south America, you see, and on the bus there was a "coloured section" and a "white section". A white person wanted to sit in my seat, in the "coloured section", and I refused.
ME: "Hmmm."
ROSA: "Yes?"
ME: "I was just thinking...were you called 'gauche' though?"
ROSA: "What? No!"
ME: "So what do you know about discrimination?"
ROSA: "...."
ME: "I mean, why don't you look up to and revere Nigel Hastilow? Why do you and everyone else discriminate against him, just for being left-handed? Hmm?"
ROSA: "It's not because he's left-handed. It's because he's a fucking cunt."
Fair.
There was a huge fuss recently when Wolverhampton's Laura Payton was given an apology and £150 compensation by the Halifax because she took offence at a bit of a joke about the colour of her hair. Mrs Payton complained a member of staff told her: "I bet your daughter is glad she isn't ginger like you."
Now, OK, maybe this is just me, but I think that's pretty damn appalling. "I bet your daughter is glad she doesn't look like you, you freak"? If someone said that to my wife I'd poke them in the eye. An apology and £150? Good! I'd want that employee sacked as well. Why would you even say that to somebody? I've already laboured this point but "I bet your daughter is glad she isn't black like you" - would that still be "a bit of a joke"?
When I read about this I'm sorry to say I wasn't outraged on Mrs Payton's behalf.
You're not sorry.
It just made me chuckle.
Really? This is probably the unfunniest thing I've ever read in my life, and I've watched "Citizen Khan" AND "My Family". Saying that to a stranger isn't humorous, it's incredibly disrespectful.
But it turns out most of the world's redheads are happy to moan about how badly they were bullied at school and you think: "You're having a laugh." Or, in the words of John McEnroe, one of the world's famous left-handers :"You cannot be serious."
Nigel Hastilow's advice to children who are currently being bullied at school: "Just shut the fuck up."
I have nothing against redheads. Some of my best friends are ginger.
Did we have a sweepstake for how long it'd take for that sentence to get an airing?
Obviously you have to be wary of them, given their notoriously bad tempers.
I'd be wary of the Irish, given their tendencies to gun British people down.
Even so, there can be something distinctly alluring about all that flame-coloured hair. What really isn't on is for this group to complain it's discriminated against. Reddism is nothing compared with leftism, discrimination against left-handers.
(Here comes a really boring bit. Sorry. It does get better later on though.)
The world isn't designed to make life difficult for ginger-nuts but it certainly is for us lefties. We can't even sit at a computer without having to move the mouse from the right hand side of the desk to the left (assuming the wire is long enough) or we have to try manipulating it with our right hands. I'd like to see you right-handers try it left-handed. Institutionalised leftism is rife. For years, I found it completely impossible to use chopsticks. I just couldn't manipulate them in any way which conveyed food to face.
Based on what we'll see later, I'm a little surprised Mr Hastilow eats that foreign muck, but we'll get to that.
Then - and you may say this shows just how slow-witted left-handers must be - one day it occurred to me to try transferring them to my left hand.
And the award for "World's Shittest Anecdote" goes to....
Suddenly a whole new world opened up. The miracle of chopsticks. Why hadn't I tried them in my left hand before?
You're a bit thick?
Because they are laid out for right-handers and the obvious solution to my problem never occurred to me.
As you're clever people you already know that this is bollocks, but take it from me, a leftie - this IS bollocks. If there's a pen to my right, I'm not going to pick it up and try writing with my right hand. I'm going to transfer it to my left. Now either Hastilow is the thickest man EVER, or he's just writing this to fill space and praying that this backs up his point. Not that he has one anyway.
Thick, I know, but we lefties are used to life's little inconveniences. Try, for instance, cutting your fingernails with a pair of scissors using your left hand. It is more or less impossible. Discrimination starts early, of course. When I was at school, they still held to the antediluvian
Great word, I'll give him that.
view that all kids should be right-handed. Lefties were, as the Romans used to say, sinister. So I was taught to play cricket right-handed and kick a football with my right foot. Worse, of course, was the requirement that I should write with my right hand. It was very difficult and my handwriting was awful. We had to submit examples of our work to be assessed by the teachers. Mine were so consistently terrible I took to writing things out secretly with my left hand and then swearing blind it had been done with my right. What a terrible little liar I must have been. But the alternative was to have my work thrown back at me time after time because my (right handed) handwriting was so poor.
That's all very interesting, Nigel, but I don't think that sort of attitude has prevailed in our schools for many years now, so why reference it?
I don't think that sort of attitude has prevailed in our schools for many years now.
Yes.
But unthinking leftism remains a daily difficulty for the 10% of the population blessed with the talent, creativity, and originality to make the best of our unfortunate predicament. Even my dictionary defines left-handed as being "awkward, unlucky, dubious."
A biscuit to anyone who can remember what kicked off this weird little rant in the first place. Wasn't it about a woman being abused in a bank? It's been so long now, I forget.
And if you think a laughable lefty is as bad as a ginger whinger, consider this: Research in America shows that even left-handed surgeons are themselves frightened of being treated by fellow left-handed surgeons - because all their training and equipment is designed for right-handers.
We've still got about four paragraphs of this nonsense left, fucking hell. I'm as bored as you are.
Still, this is not intended to be another moan from a supposedly oppressed minority. Quite the opposite, in fact.
You could have fooled me.
Mrs Payton should have laughed off the Halifax worker's little joke just as rich redheads like Lily Cole or Nicole Kidman should just get over it.
Fuck Nicole Kidman. I'm serious. Aren't you sick of her, constantly whining? I walked out of the cinema halfway through "Moulin Rouge!", such was the frequency of her moaning "Wah wah wah I have red hair, boo hoo everyone fucking hates me".
My advice to Lily Cole and Nicole Kidman - just, like, get over yourselves darlings!
And, whatever inconveniences we lefties have to put up with, you won't find us queuing up at the bank for compensation because all those pens-on-string are positioned for right-handers.
Because A) They extend across for left-handers and B) They don't verbally abuse you.
Yet the prevailing sense of victim-hood knows no bounds. Any group of people can find reason to moan - and most of them do: "Oh it's so unfair they're calling me fat or Welsh or too tall, or too thin, or a Scouser, or too old, too young, a social security scrounger, a rich banker..."
Am I wrong or did I just read about a million fucking words from someone complaining about holding chopsticks in the wrong hand, or something?
We are all eager to portray ourselves as hard done-by. I blame the compensation culture.
We're almost done, I promise.
People will always give each other nicknames, make snide comments and rude remarks or unthinkably ignore the needs of left-handers. But we lefties wouldn't dream of complaining. It wouldn't be right.
End of bollocks.
Hastilow's article caught my eye because I read some utter nonsense from him a few weeks back which was crowned off by the charming sentence of "What's good about the NHS anyway?" Last night, I was intrigued as to who he is/what his background is so I Googled him and H-O-L-Y S-H-I-T.
Google Nigel Hastilow. First thing you see is this:
"People also search for: Enoch Powell"
followed by several articles about him quitting as a Tory (of course) PPC because of his belief that "Enoch Powell was right". You then go onto his Wiki page, which tells us that he's an "active member of the TaxPayers Alliance and a supporter of the Freedom Association".
In short (and I bet he is short as well) Hastilow is mad, bad, and very dangerous to know. How fucking appalling it is that local newspapers are giving him space and money to spew his filthy bile out at us.
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