Slumdog Britain

A Red Extravaganza

I didn’t watch the Olympic opening jamboree on Friday; I had more important things to do.  Besides, I can’t stand Danny Boyle, the man who orchestrated the whole thing, that train-spotting slum dog millionaire.  I have now, though; I caught up with it this afternoon on iPlayer. 

Why?  First, because I was bemused by the hysterical onslaught on Aiden Burley, the Conservative Member of Parliament who dared to tweet his disapproval.  Second, because the Sunday Telegraph, which I had always taken to be a conservative and Conservative newspaper, published an article by Dan Hodges, a tiresome Labour Party hack, pouring more dead dogs on the unfortunate Burley.

What, I asked myself; did I buy the hyper-liberal Observer by mistake?  No, sure enough, it was the Telegraph.  I popped over to the Sunday Mail website, hoping for some right-wing sanity, only to be greeted by a copy of a counter-tweet by that fat idiot John Prescott.  This is a man who proved that stupidity and an inability to master the rudiments of proper spoken English is no bar to high political office. Yes, there he was, saying to Burley “That opening ceremony made me proud to be British.  Your tweet made me angry that you are too.” 

I’m getting well ahead of the story here.  What was Burley’s crime; what did he say that caused such an explosion of drivel?  In two chirps simply this: “The most leftie opening ceremony I’ve ever seen – more than Beijing, the capital of a communist state.  Welfare tribute next?  Thank God the athletes have arrived.  Now we can move on from that leftie multi-cultural crap.  Bring back the red arrows, Shakespeare and the Stones.”

And that was the stone around his neck, by which free speech was drowned like a puppy. He has now attempted to backtrack, silly man, saying that he was talking about the way the show was handled, not multiculturalism itself.  Look, Aiden, in the rare chance that you ever read this, never apologise and never, ever give the idiots a second chance to bite.  Multiculturalism is indeed a lot of tosh. Our Prime Minister said as much not so long ago, though using a more mealy-mouthed form of words, as did Nicholas Sarkozy, the former president of France.  

So, as I say, in order to form a more perfect opinion, I watched the whole thing this afternoon.  What did I think?  Why, that it was a soggy porridge of leftie multi-cultural crap.  OK, let me be completely fair, like the curate’s proverbial egg it was good in parts; in other parts it was really rotten.  I liked some of the early routines, which were very well choreographed, and I thought the Industrial Revolution sequence was excellent. But in total, as a depiction of our people and our nation, the whole thing was a sad joke.

My goodness, all those not so subtle and not so subliminal Marxist metaphors, what a scream!  How lovely to see, apropos of nothing at all, Boyle's onstage proletariat forming themselves, North Korean-style, into the badge of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, presumably a celebration of a communist-inspired front that would have left this country defenceless in the face of a serious Soviet threat. At the next moment they were a star. The only thing missing was the hammer and cycle.  

Then there were the dancing nurses and the bouncing patients, a tedious and lengthy tribute to the National Health Service, that ‘much loved’ institution, a sequence that might usefully serve in future as a crazy party political broadcast for Ed Millipede and his gang, a sort of Medicine in Wonderland.  And did you know that twentieth century British history seems to have begun with the arrival of the Empire Windrush from the West Indies, carrying lots of black immigrants?  Well, it did, in the gospel according to Boyle.

I looked in the midst of the universal praise for Boyle, coupled with the demonisation of Burley, for some sanity and, thank goodness, I found it, a blog by Douglas Murray in the Spectator (The Olympic opening satire), an organ clearly still to be overtaken by the onward surge of political madness.   As he says, any foreigner watching this farce must have thought that the NHS was our national religion.  Yes, it really should have been followed by another lengthy montage in praise of welfare, maybe with gyrating dole recipients.  The problem with this is that most of them are too obese to dance.  A shabby socialist hymn, that’s the only way I can describe Boyle’s extravaganza, one in which the Queen herself was induced to take part in a particularly embarrassing James Bond parachute sequence

As we moved towards the finale the whole thing became positively infantile, particularly the music tribute, a cross section of our ‘cultural richness’ put together by a moron in a hurry.  For me Murray really hit the spot with these cogent words;

My main fear is that a young person from elsewhere in the world – better educated, but possibly lacking our sense of humour – might take it all literally. They may have learned of a Britain which was a serious country and produced many of the world’s greatest writers, leaders, thinkers and artists. After watching last night’s ceremony they will realise that Britain is in fact a country which, though once inhabited by hobbits, is only around fifty years old and stuck in a state of permanent adolescence. This will make them doubt their teachers and probably end up becoming anarchists.

Overall the spectacle made me cringe.  Only the likes of Prescott could be proud of this idiotic farrago.  If I thought Boyle had any intelligence at all I might have been impressed by his satirical abilities, his Jonathan Swift-like capacity to make fun of absurdity.  But he has none.  This travesty was for him the literal truth of our country.  It’s shaming that so many seem to have been seduced by his socialist agitprop.  I expect Boyle to be awarded the Hero of Socialist Labour, second class, any day now by our Dear Leader, Comrade David Cameron.