Shared Opinion

7 February 2009

I’m a convert to shoe-throwing, and its power. But I bet they ban shoes in public pretty soon

Only, al-Zaidi didn’t get away with it, did he? He was beaten and jailed, he’s still in jail two months later, and he might be looking at a sentence of up to 15 years. That’s why I’m still in two minds about shoe-throwing. It makes people snigger. It becomes a funny story, rather than a glaring example of what we are, and what Iraq’s still not.

It’s early days in the pending myth of the Great Snow of 2009 and the narrative isn’t yet entirely clear. One way or another, obviously, it’s going to be a source of great national shame. Only, how?

At the time of writing, the Blitz spirit line isn’t going to cut it. I jettisoned it as I walked through the City on Monday. Somebody had passed out near Bank station. A few of us helped him, but most people just weren’t interested. Everybody was too concerned about not falling over, not being cold, not being late. A friend from Wimbledon told me that there were people fighting over bread in his local Sainsbury’s. I’ve a hunch that mild disaster makes people nasty. Things have to get really bad before they get nice.

Health And Safety Gone Mad, by contrast, is a strong candidate. That one clicked when I finally got home. It is some rare feat of small-minded, Little Hitler dullardism to actually close parks when it snows, as Camden Council did. It takes arse-covering to an extraordinary degree to leave little old ladies to slip along icy pavements because you don’t have the balls to send out the buses, as Transport for London did.

I reckon the winner, though, will be Indolent Britain. I came up with that one when I was on the tube, and they told me they had closed the Waterloo and City line. For those of you who don’t live in London, that’s the one that has only two stations. It goes under the Thames. Snowing much under the Thames on Monday, do you think? Or were the drivers all back home, building snowmen in their gardens for their kids who couldn’t be bothered to go to schools in which teachers couldn’t be bothered to teach?

Yeah, Indolent Britain. You have wildcat strikes over the unreasonableness of employing cheap, foreign labour and simultaneously — simultaneously — half the native labour force decides to down tools and go sledging. Hey, I’m not judging. I read a story in the Times on Monday about a Bulgarian who has spent the last three months living in a Scottish shed, peeling potatoes. That was what got me into the office. Pure capitalist shame. Otherwise I’d probably have spent the day on the sofa, too.

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Anonymous Heathcare Professional

February 6th, 2009 3:37pm Report this comment

Great column this week! Don't ask how I know this but a quite nice impromptu weapon that I've heard of is popping your keys into your sock and leathering someone with it. In case they ban shoes. Anyway, back to work for me ...er ... in the medical profession...

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