WHAT IS 'POSH' ?

Listening to the 'Today' programme on Radio 4 this morning, I happened upon a piece that purported to be a discussion about the discrimination suffered by 'Posh' people.

The proponent was suggesting that 'Posh' people are a minority who now experience discrimination to such an extent that they try to hide, and even to deny, their 'poshness'. He cited the reluctance of David Cameron to talk openly and with pride about his background and schooling at Eton. He also cited an instance from some television programme on which a woman received a round of applause from the audience after loudly stating 'I hate posh blokes'.

His opponent immediately turned the discussion to one about the rich who rule our society; he equated 'poshness' with privilege, wealth and power, and no one did anything to disabuse him. Unsurprisingly, John Humphries, the presenter, simply chuckled in his usual annoying manner and left no one in any doubt as to where his sympathies lay.

It seems to me that everyone involved in the radio discussion completely missed the point. These days, anyone with a reasonable education and background, who dresses and speaks relatively well, is deemed to be 'Posh'; as such, they are pigeon-holed by those who see themselves as 'ordinary blokes' and may well be vilified to some degree. However, this 'poshness' has nothing to do with people being privileged, rich or powerful; it is simply a matter of education and familial influence.

Because I speak reasonably well and know a range of long words, I've been nicknamed 'Posh John' in my local pub. Partly, this is a mechanism to distinguish me from several other Johns who drink in the establishment, but it's also a mark of discrimination. The person who invented the acronym doesn't like me; he sees me as being 'posh' and equates this with privilege and wealth, of which he is envious. That I am far from privileged and far less wealthy than his family appears to have escaped him. He settles arguements with his fists, I write letters and use the law - this he sees as further evidence that I'm to be despised as not being like 'ordinary blokes'.

Much of our media is dominated by privileged and wealthy people who eschew their origins and deny their innate 'poshness' in order to make themselves acceptable to the uneducated masses who comprise their audiences. There is no doubt that being 'posh' is not only out of favour it is positively despised, but this is, in a way, the consequence of a failed education system. It is a result of the inverted snobbery of those who didn't go to the best school, didn't get any GCSEs and didn't go to university; it's the attitude of those who believe the only real work is manual work and that office workers and management are the enemy.

My dictionary defines 'Posh' as being 'smart, elegant or fashionable' and also as 'upper-class or genteel'; it does not mention privilege or wealth. I'm certainly not 'upper-class' and I don't think anyone would call me genteel. I've never been fashionable, and elegant isn't an adjective I'd use about myself, but possibly I might sometimes be considered 'smart', in the presentational sense. Do I feel discriminated against ? Possibly, on occasion. Does this worry me ? No.

DANISH FOOD GESTAPO SPREAD THEIR WINGS.

I have just read with some astonishment that the Danish government has banned the sale of 'Marmite'. Reading further, I see that this is not the only foodstuff to have been banned in that country.

I'm sure there are many who, like me, find 'Marmite' to be utterly disgusting and will rejoice at the product's demise, albeit in only one pretty insignificant nation. However, the list of other banned substances, and the reasoning behind the bans, leaves me bewildered; the Australian counterpart to 'Marmite', 'Vegemite', 'Ovaltine', 'Horlicks', 'Farley's Rusks', 'Rice Krispies' and 'Shreddies' plus who knows what other harmless products. The Danish food Gestapo apparently dislikes foodstuffs that have added vitamins or minerals and Danish food safety laws require such items to be banned from sale unless specific approval is given; all of these products have fallen foul of this lunacy.

It would seem that either the Danes know something about food safety that has so far escaped the rest of the world, or that they're a nation terrified of its own shadow. Given the list of banned products, I know which I suspect it is. 

OBAMA NOT THE ONLY IRISHMAN

Unlikely though it may seem at first glance, Barack Obama has apparently achieved that aim of most recent US Presidents and found himself an Irish forebear. One of his great-great-great grandfathers supposedly came from the village of Moneygall in County Offaly and Obama will undoubtedly squeeze every ounce of electoral benefit out of this fact.

To put a little perspective on this, we each have 32 great-great-great grandparents so Obama can claim to be about 3% Irish, though the way that heredity works, it could actually be significantly more, or less, than this. However much Irish ancestry he has, it is a strange fact of history that the Irish seem to have infiltrated every part of the world and there are far more people who claim Irish ancestry abroad than there have ever been Irish in Ireland.

For my own 'piece of the Blarney', I can outdo the President by some distance. While my mother's family were from continental Europe, my father's had large chunks of Irish in it with the probability being that I have 10 Irish great-great-great grandparents, though not having the resources of a President, it may be hard to prove. Fortunately, as I see it, my ancestors were from Limerick and Cork, so there's not much chance that I share any traceable links with the President though his researchers are welcome to look for one if they like.

THE FOOTBALLER, THE M.P., AND A FARCE.

A Member of Parliament that very few of us had ever heard of, yesterday took it upon himself to abuse his position by using 'Parliamentary Privilege' to name the footballer at the centre of the recent inane twittering about his extra-marital activities.

The MP in question, a LibDem named John Hemming, apparently has some sort of reputation for being a bit of a maverick in such matters and took this opportunity to grab a piece of the limelight for himself. Although he was admonished by the Speaker, his actions seem to be immune from any legal process, even though he clearly broke the injunction issued by the courts.

I have no time for the idiot footballer, nor for the ludicrous laws that have allowed the issuing of so-called 'superjunctions', but I also have no time for the likes of Mr Hemming. Whatever his personal views on the matter, his naming of the footballer in a public place was a clear breach of privilege; it was entirely unnecessary and simply his way of attracting attention to himself. That the name of the subject was already known to thousands, or perhaps even millions, of people makes no difference; a court with appropriate jurisdiction had issued an order and, it should have been complied with until lifted. By acting as he did, Mr Hemming has brought discredit on both himself and Parliament.

The advent of services such as 'Twitter' clearly has the potential to make a mockery of any law that attempts to invoke a right to privacy, particulary when the rich or famous are involved. At the same time, it is a sad reflection on the nature of our society that so many of us seem to be so interested in the salacious, but largely irrelevant, activities of 'celebrities', most of whom have very little to offer the world.

It seems clear that there will have to be changes to the law but what these will be has yet to be revealed. Whilst it cannot be right that the likes of Fred Goodwin, and others in positions of trust and authority, can hide their misdemeanours under a cloak of legal anonymity, the footballer's actions are in a different league. He has no power or authority, other than that gifted to him by his adoring supporters - why should anyone really care whom, or what, he sleeps with ? It makes no difference to the world what he does or with whom, while Fred Goodwin's actions may well have impacted on his disastrous management of a major financial institution.

No one has come out of this sorry mess with any credit. The law has been shown to be ridiculous and unenforceable; the footballer has been shown to be anything but the loving family man he'd no doubt like his supporters to see him as; Mr Hemming has shown himself to be a self-serving egotist and Parliament appears to be impotent to do anthing about any of it. Worst of all, millions of ordinary people seem to be fascinated by the bedroom antics of a footballer, but then they're probably the same morons who sit glued to 'Eastenders', Coronation Street', 'Big Brother' and all the mindless 'reality' shows that bestride our television screens these days like the lilliputian colossuses that they are.

What a farce.

TWITS TWITTER; CELEBS INJUNCT.

The whole idea of 'Twitter' seems to be to pander to the lowest common denominator, those who have the shortest attention span, least real knowledge and an insaitable desire for either disseminating, or hearing about, the trivial doings of largely trivial people. That serious journalists and even some politicians have resorted to this medium shows only how desperate they are for the attention of the twits who inhabit this arena.

In recent days, the High Court has ruled that so-called super-injunctions should only be issued in very rare and exceptional circumstances, mainly because the issue of many of those currently in effect has been circumvented by users of the aforementioned 'Twitter'. Now, a footballer identified as 'CTB', is trying to obtain an order that could compel 'Twitter' to say who has been spreading certain stories about him and identifying him in connection with an action he is currently taking against the 'Sun' newspaper and some woman I've never heard of.

Whoever this footballer is, and presumably many people already know and it can't be very difficult to find out, he's presumbly one of those highly overpaid and overrated clots who play in our 'Premier League'; presumably, he's done something he'd rather keep hidden from his admirers for fear of the damage that public knowledge would do both to his image and his sponsorship income.

As it's based in California and the US approach to 'privacy' is somewhat different to ours, it seems quite unlikely that 'Twitter' will comply with any order issued by a British court. It nonetheless seems quite ridiculous that the doings of some kicker of a ball should either be of sufficient interest to warrant this level of attention or should warrant the issue of an injunction or other order by the courts. In this instance, however, 'Twitter' has probably done us a service, though not for any reason that could be identified as laudable, more to do with the gossipy, salacious and celebrity-orientated nature of their audience.

Frankly, however, we seem to have lost all sense of proportion where such matters are concerned.

A REMINDER OF ABERFAN.

Today's news story of a mud-slide that's struck an orphanage in Malaysia brings to mind the awful events of 1966 when heavy rains caused a coal mining slag heap to descend upon the village of Aberfan.

Back in October 1966, 144 people died, including 116 children, when the mud and slag hit Aberfan, destroying the village school and around 20 homes that were in its path. As a 13 year old at the time, I well remember the news coverage and also remember being horribly shocked; this was, I think, the first news story that really affected me. I'd been aware of the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, but  that was something far away and didn't really register, other than that all the adults seemed terribly concerned. Aberfan, on the other hand, wasn't so far away and that so many children had died was much, much closer to home.

It seems that the Malaysian incident may end with as many as 20 deaths, which is sad and tragic for those involved, and for the families as far as they are known or alive, but it pales into insignificance besides that dreadful day in 1966.

MOSLEY SHOULD SHUT UP.

Listening to Max Mosley in recent times, arguing for a law of privacy, is becoming very, very, annoying.

This man was caught in a highly compromising situation and doesn't like it. He's now on a crusade to try to get some sort of 'privacy law' introduced in the UK. Does he really think that this is right, or in the interests of the population whom the law is meant to serve ?

It is right that the population has knowledge of the actions of those who are in positions of power, whoever they are. Ludicrously, if my next door neighbour wears a NAZI uniform to a party, or his wife runs a slightly dodgy 'Escort Agency', it'll be front page news in the local paper and there'll be no 'come-back', but if Max Mosley behaves in an inappropriate fashion, the suggestion is that we are supposed to have no right to know, or even to know that there is something that we have no right to know about.

Mosley's obsessive approach to this issue serves only to suggest that there is more to discover about his life that he'd rather keep hidden. What could be worse than his well known relationship with the vilified Oswald Mosley, his father, is hard to imagine but, if he keeps up his current campaign, heaven knows what salacious
stories will emerge.