Bring on the Buffoon

It is important that I give him his due, of course. In his twenties he had an impressive career, spending two years working  in a bookies after University before moving to Asda, where after only another year as a cashier he eventually became what my research tells me was called the supermarket's  Customer Services Project Manager for the grateful people of Leeds. I am impressed, and so you should be. I am sure that his achievements made him a man of thrusting business, of enterprise, of the Real World, and saloon bar politics.

Yet for some reason Mr Davies' political career, for such an intelligent man, has been spotted with silliness. In 2006, for instance, it was reported there was an unpleasant incident of vandalism in Davies' area which, predictably enough, was rumoured to be the work of people who follow Islam. Davies' reported response was to say "If there’s anybody who should f*** off it’s the Muslims who do this sort of thing." The police later stated that it had nothing at all to do with Moslems. Or we could look at the time when he called on the Government to "scrap the Human Rights Act for foreign nationals and chuck them out of the country".

Looking at all of this I began to ask myself if this was evidence that we are not alone as the target of Davies' discrimination. There have been others in history who have thought that the mentally ill, along with the other minorities they hate, aren't worth very much as people and have no place in their dream society. The Alice-through-the Looking Glass morality I sometimes hear from Philip Davies speaks at least to me, of a few of the most appalling attitudes of the twentieth century. Some of us do the political activity thing against it, of course. But no-one should feel guilty about not being involved.  God knows, mental illness is bad enough already without taking all that on.   

I must tell you that Davies has suffered from a large number of disabled people ringing him up and leaving argumentative messages. They seem to have got hold of his Westminster number...