On the Ubiquitous Mr Starkey

The BBC seems intent on inflicting the unpleasant Mr David Starkey, representing the Dr Strangelove wing of the Tory party upon us. Question Time last week, Any Questions this week, Mr Starkey a television historian of somewhat limited range, obsessed as he is with narrative, the lives of ‘the great people,’ of the larger historical canvas he is not interested. His emotional range is however even more limited, a man wholly devoid of empathy, taken up with his own self importance, falling over himself to make ever more pompous statements.

His current obsession is the poor or has he would say ‘the pour.’ The pour you see need to be put in their place, certainly disabused of the notion that they can live in the same vicinity as the middle classes or the rich, (Mr Starkey informs us that he has many friends who fall into the latter category, well bully for him!)

Now, as the Americans say, I have a dog in this fight, I live in Notting Hill and have recently ceased to live on a good middle class income and am currently receiving Housing Benefit. Presumably Mr Starkey would have me deported to some ghetto in that vague area called ‘the north.’

Now of course all this talk of the feckless poor who insist on breeding children on the dole is not new, such talk had wide currency during the 1930’s, which of course if he was anything like a good historian he would know. All those indolent women giving birth on Assistance whilst all those jobs in domestic service were going begging!

I fear we are moving into dark times and Mr Starkey represents the real thinking behind Government policy, the hate that dare not speak its name. At the end of Any Questions Mr Starkey indicated his disapproval of poetry, in those few short words he told me all I needed to know about the man.,

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