Given that this blog offers you 'up-to-the-month-ish' commentary on current affairs, you will not be surprised that it has taken me a week to find out that John 'Gaunty' Gaunt has been suspended by that intellectual broadcasting colossus, 'TawkSpoort', even though I listen to the blasted thing everyday. The only excuse I can offer is that in the main I only listen to the 'footie witterers' from 6.00 to 10.00 am. I find it soothing in that unlike my experience with the BBC in which the broadcasters are immensely smug whilst I, the listener, am reduced to stabbing my own eyes out in rage and apoplexy; with 'TawkSpoort' it is the opposite, with the presenters and their call-in listeners foaming at the mouth over this or that disaster in the mindless world of 'footie' about which I remain entirely calm because I simply don't care. 'Gaunty' comes on at 10.00 am and provides three hours of commentary on whatever is causing headlines in the media. The fact that he is a columnist for The Sun ("We Love It!") tells you all you need to know about his general approach to current affairs. As a balance, of sorts, the station has 'Pussy Galore' Galloway on late in the evening although my incipient masochism has not so far allowed me to listen to that political spiv spinning his web of political fantasy.
'Gaunty' is intemperate by nature which is why I don't listen to him that often despite being generally in sympathy with his views. I admire him as a man because from the very humblest of beginnings as a child put into care, and later, as a business bankrupt who lost his home, he battled back to fame (of a sort) and fortune. Apparently, a couple of weeks ago he interviewed a Tory councillor who was advocating a strict policy of refusing to place children in the care of foster-parents who smoked. Remember, these are vulnerable, mentally wounded children who are desperately in need of the tranquility of a settled home, and yet this over-paid Pecksniff was going to deny them that chance on the non-existent grounds that there was a danger to their health. 'Gaunty' called him "a Nazi" but later changed it to "health Nazi". If it had been me, I would have felt impelled to ask the commenters at 'Sister Wolf's' site to provide me with the very latest in scatological insults (they're experts!) because even my years spent in sundry barrack-rooms would not have provided a sufficient vocabulary to describe this jumped-up, little Hitler with a brain the size of a pea.
All of that, of course, brings me to the subject of the place of insult in discussions of what might be called 'current affairs'. As you know, on this site I can ride with a fair degree of foul language provided it doesn't become totally boring, and vituperative insults are a frequent hazard - how could it be otherwise with the likes of Dr. 'Teabag' hovering in the shadows? The result is that here, at Duff & Nonsense, the occasional four-letter word is excised but no-one is ever banned. Apropos the insult offered by 'Gaunty', I have lost count of the number of times I have been called a Nazi. It never worries me because, of course, I am not, and anyway, in the great lexicon of insulting names I would be more upset to be called a 'Commie' than a 'Nazi' if only because when it comes to mass murder of innocent people the 'Commies' made the 'Nazis' look like amateurish beginners. Would 'Gaunty' have been suspended for calling that 'pox doctor's clerk' a 'Commie', I wonder, and think probably not.
Hovering over this minature spat is the larger non-problem of what is to be done with people who have been 'outed' as members of the BNP. Absolutely nothing is the obvious answer but it seems to have been quite beyond the mental capabilities of the 'commentariat' to grasp. The BNP is a legal political party and membership of it should not affect the employment of anyone.
Anyway, I'm off now to e-mail 'TawkSpoort' and tell them to bring 'Gaunty' back lest they risk being called 'DorkSpoort' in future!
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