Wreckers of civilization

October 14, 2008 9:44 PM

Who's wrecked Britain? A three part list from the Daily Mail.

Here's the whole 50 in full if you don't want to plough through...

Jeffrey Archer ("scandal-flecked clown")
Richard Beeching ("short-termist dunderhead")
Howard Schultz ("king of the caramel macchiatos")
James Callaghan ("sly and matey, bespectacled yet glinty of eye")
Diana, Princess of Wales ("false harbinger of egalitarianism")
Greg Dyke ("the man who invented Roland Rat")
Charles Saatchi ("responsible for a demoralising infection of our national aesthetic")
Graham Kelly ("gormless and inadequate")
Anthony Crosland ("driven by a vindictive hatred of elitism")
John McEnroe ("helped spread bad sportmanship")
Stpehen Marks ("encouraged a generation of Britons to think lightly about foul language")
John Prescott ("gormless and ineloquent")
Frank Blackmore ("mini roundabouts are the very opposite of democratic")
Sir Jimmy Savile ("epitomised a breed of shallow show-offs")
Edward Heath ("yielded to the sorry creed of multi-culturalism")
Janet Street-Porter ("ageing non-revolutionary")
Margaret Thatcher ("her radicalism had an ugly, vengeful side")
Alan Titchmarsh ("that chirpy smile, those practised Yorkshire vowels")
Topsy and Tim ("lead lives of blameless, centre-Left orthodoxy")
Tim Westwood ("an emblem of cultural defeatism")
Tony Blair ("a selfish w*****")
Richard Brunstrom ("swivel-eyed evangelist")
Paul Burrell ("soapy-mannered little podge")
Sir Alex Ferguson ("bloated egotist")
Kenneth Baker ("ill-considered changes to our law")
The Very Rev. Ronald Jasper ("bloody fool")
Sir Denys Lasdun ("popular ideas of beauty were treated with contempt")
Helen Willetts ("pushy moderniser", "northern-accented show-off", "geeky-smiled creature")
Dame Suzi Leather ("hard-boiled state meddler")
Richard Dawkins ("merciless demander of provable fact")
Geoffrey Rippon ("responsible for handing over our fishing rights to the EEC")
Julia Smith ("EastEnders bastes Britain in the juices of misery, violence and nostalgia")
'Webonymous' ("content to hurl vitriol and hide from proper argument")
Michael Martin ("as thick as cold custard")
Harold Wilson ("Thanks, Harold. Thanks a bunch.")
John Birt ("plodding windbag")
Ed Balls ("an insufferable and dangerous menace")
John Scarlett ("his conduct left open questions about his impartiality")
Graham Kendrick ("pre-eminent churner-outer of evangelical bilge")
Gordon Brown ("Prime Minister? Prime culprit, more like.")
Tony Greig ("feels driven to infect others with his rage and itchy anxiety")
Maurice 'Maus' Gatsonides ("invented the speed camera")
David Blunkett ("Immigration, law enforcement, education. In a rare triple whammy, Blunkett helped cock them all up")
Peter Bazalgette ("in it for the money")
Alastair Campbell ("a deeply unBritish character")
Harold Walker ("grandfather of the Health And Safety At Work Act")
Rupert Murdoch ("crushed the elegance of the letters page")
Nicholas Ridley ("We will live with his mistakes until the weeds of Doomsday lift their tendrils and bring man's uugly brickwork cascading back down to earth")
Rhodes Boyson ("take him down")
Alun Michael ("miserable, mangy, weak")

posted by debord (47 comments total)

Surely the daily mail would rank pretty high on any list.
posted by delmoi at 10:08 PM on October 14, 2008 [7 favorites]

Loathsome tabloid the Daily Mail has put together a list of people who have ruined Britain?

*brain goes kaboom*
posted by nudar at 10:08 PM on October 14, 2008 [4 favorites]

Not pasty-faced bags of bile called Quentin who write for the Daily Mail? It would be instructive (in an emetic sense of that word) for the newspaper (in the loosest sense of that woord) to set out the particular point in history where Britain wasn't "wrecked." I fear it only exists in the self-deluding nostalgia of Quentin and his ilk. Or as likely, is code for a time when black people were safely ensconced in the colonies and the working class below stairs.
posted by Abiezer at 10:16 PM on October 14, 2008 [3 favorites]

"Content to hurl vitriol and hide from proper argument"

Wow. There is roughly 3000 miles of dirt between me and the UK and I'm still developing a rash from exposure to this level of hypocrisy. I can only imagine what the carnage is like in London.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 10:22 PM on October 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wow, a Daily Mail series that's not entirely repugnant — it's even appreciable, half agreeable! (decimalization? multi-culturalism?)

It's refreshing that he castigated Rupert Murdoch (however trivially) and not someone like Ken Livingstone. Though I do guess the list wasn't composed for the Daily Mail, just serialized there.
posted by blasdelf at 10:28 PM on October 14, 2008

No mention of Oasis? Glad to see Richard Dawkins in there.
posted by philip-random at 10:32 PM on October 14, 2008

I thought I'd better qualify that I understand the humour of The Daily Mail publishing this list. It was interesting so I posted it.
Although the Daily Mail is responsible for my favourite online article this year.
posted by debord at 10:37 PM on October 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

No mention of gypsies?
posted by Artw at 10:45 PM on October 14, 2008

The Daily Mail is not worth it for lining the budgy's cage. But it does show up how banal the worst newspapers in Australia and America are. At least it has the odd turn of phrase that hints at something better.
posted by bystander at 11:18 PM on October 14, 2008

As an American, let me just say that I don't understand a single bit of this.
posted by newdaddy at 11:28 PM on October 14, 2008

newdaddy: the Daily Mail is Britain's most loathed tabloid "newspaper" (previously Nazi sympathising) read by middle Englanders who think it is a more intelligent choice than some of the others.

Apparently they've published a list of people who have ruined our wonderful country. But really its the usual anti-progressive brigade trotting out their tired nonsense about some of the more progressives we have here.

As people have said up-thread, the Daily Mail should be at the top of the list. It is single-handedly responsible for some of the most hate-filled thinking I've come across. Anti pretty much anything you can think of.

*sigh*

Thankfully my ad blocker also blocks Daily Mail content :-)
posted by Lleyam at 11:58 PM on October 14, 2008 [1 favorite]

I for one am shocked! This article is much too long to be from the Daily Mail.

(completely agree on Beeching's evisceration of the rail network - but a bunch of the others are just pathetic wingeing about a magical little England Britain that never was.)
posted by jb at 12:22 AM on October 15, 2008

It would seem that the author of this list considered Britain unwrecked up until about 1963, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was the year he was born.
posted by misteraitch at 12:40 AM on October 15, 2008 [3 favorites]

Quote from Guardian's Polly Toynbee on Daily Mail:

No one tries harder to foster national anger, despair and fear than the Mail. No one paints a grimmer daily portrait of a nation that's been in terminal moral decline since Lord Northcliffe rolled the first edition off the presses in 1896. When asked at the end of his life for his magic formula, Northcliffe wheezed: "I give them a daily hate."
posted by internationalfeel at 1:02 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Richard Dawkins ("merciless demander of provable fact")

If I was him I'd put that on my tombstone.
posted by minifigs at 1:16 AM on October 15, 2008 [4 favorites]

No Paul Dacre, Linda Lee-Potter, Veronica Wadley, Richard Littlejohn, Melanie Phillips etc? FAIL.
posted by WPW at 1:56 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

If I was him I'd put that on my tombstone.

Not a bad epitaph.

He is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and tours the world lecturing the elites of the West that they are stupid to believe in any god.

I hate it when people criticise someone/something they patently don't understand. That's NOT what he does. He attempts, often in vain, to get people to understand and accept Evolution, which is surely a good thing (even if he is overly combative and strident about it).

He proselytises against the proselytisers, most of his targets wishing they had a fraction of his apparent certainty.

"God moves in mysterious ways" is usually their last ditch effort to deflect attention away from the fact that faith and reason are opposing forces.

He is the anti-preacher whose sermons are designed to erode churchgoing and, with that, weaken our happiness.

Utter bollocks. Religion doesn't equal happiness... it usually leads to prejudice (especially against gays) in my experience. I guess it just makes bigots happy.

A man less obsessed with himself and with the narrow calculations of men in white coats might realise that religion, although never offering proof of God's existence, can sugar catastrophe and brighten chasms.

Oh, so the author WANTS to sugar-coat the world in fantasy and hide from truth... and he wants everyone else to follow suit. How touching.


In times of turbulence, the human being is little different from the vole or the dormouse. It will take shelter where it can.

In the realm of pure fantasy, surrounded by like-minded cowards clinging to Bronze Age myths about a 'virgin' who turned up pregnant (raped by God)?

No amount of superior lecturing from an anti-Christ, not even one with so important a title as his, will alter that.

Methinks someone is feeling a little inferior about his lack of A Levels.
posted by chuckdarwin at 1:58 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

Lord Mayor of London Boris Johnson on Linda Lee-Potter (of the Daily Mail). She's a method columnist, isn't she? She believes it while she's writing it. Fantastic."
posted by The Ultimate Olympian at 2:08 AM on October 15, 2008

1. George III
2. Edward VIII
3. Margaret Thatcher
4. John Major
5. Tony Blair
6. The Gallaghers
7. Wayne Rooney
8. Jade Goody
9. Chris Moyles
10. The twat who wrote this fucking filler for the Mail
posted by chuckdarwin at 2:13 AM on October 15, 2008 [3 favorites]

Letts is jumping on the whinge band-wagon. The best example of recent British constructive whinging is in my view 'Is It Just Me or is Everything Shit'.

Letts work is a pale copy of the above with a more right wing slant (Enoch Powell praised for being 'more of a man' despite the slight faux pas of 'giving a racist speech', and decimilisation of the previously, seemingly wilfully difficult, British currency is lambasted as the previous system 'confused foreigners'; which is of course the purpose of any decent currency).

He does at least lambast some counter-intuitive targets, though often for the wrong reasons; Thatcher for not eviscerating the miners in a 'media-savvy' style for example. Even these counter intuitive examples display the same mind-set of British exceptionalism at some ill defined point in the fairly recent past, anti-foreigner, anti-thought twaddle that you'd expect from the Mail; Low-brow masquerading as middle-brow populism.
posted by Gratishades at 2:21 AM on October 15, 2008

The fact they list decimalisation as one of the things that wrecked Britain says everything you ever need to know about the Daily Mail
posted by almostwitty at 2:50 AM on October 15, 2008 [2 favorites]

Never mind decimalisation, who'd have thought Topsy and Tim were harbingers of doom?
posted by greycap at 3:03 AM on October 15, 2008

Richard Dawkins ("merciless demander of provable fact")

Hopefully one day he'll "wreck" the USA too. Damned provable facts!
posted by DU at 3:03 AM on October 15, 2008

That is a surprisingly interesting list for Letts and the Mail. And nice to see Alan Titchmarsh, Tim Westwood and Tony Blair together at last.
posted by ninebelow at 3:44 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

So the only PM in recent history who does'nt get a mention is John Major? I think there's something wrong there.

And yes, the Daily Hate should be top of the list. Hate-o-matic.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:44 AM on October 15, 2008

who'd have thought Topsy and Tim were harbingers of doom?

Not I, certainly. If I could erase anything about Britain, it would be Golliwogs. I hate those fucking things.
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:48 AM on October 15, 2008

Dame Suzi Leather?! That's can't possibly be a real person's name.
posted by octothorpe at 5:21 AM on October 15, 2008

Heh, bad language only exists because of French Connection UK (FCUK) advertising. (No doubt explains why Americans, Australians etc never swear).
Thanks to Heath sacking Powell, "no politician can criticise immigration" (as an immigrant, I can tell you it feels like they do nothing else).

Surprised to see Princess Diana on there, though.
posted by Infinite Jest at 6:12 AM on October 15, 2008

I do think he has a point about the mini-roundabouts, though.

I've noticed them creeping into the U.S., too. (Few years ago they put up an 'experimental' one in my town in CT; ended up removing it because the snowplows destroyed it.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 6:58 AM on October 15, 2008

1. George III

The beloved farmer king? Since when has he "destroyed Britain"? Okay, maybe he shouldn't have kept on Lord North and been more sympathetic to the demands of the colonists, but their demands were for independant parliaments - which would have led inevitably to them not being part of the Empire anyways. It might have taken a bit longer, but it would have happened.
posted by jb at 7:01 AM on October 15, 2008

George III is a rather controversial figure, and competing interpretations of his life and reign abound.
posted by chuckdarwin at 7:42 AM on October 15, 2008

Surprised to see Princess Diana on there, though.

I'd expect to see the Daily Mail leading a lynch mob against anyone suggesting such a thing. Though possibly it's a proud point of difference between them and the proper tabloids?
posted by Artw at 8:05 AM on October 15, 2008

They should stick to what they're good at, which is publishing unflattering then-and-now comparison pictures of middle aged women who were pop stars in the eighties.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:12 AM on October 15, 2008

She was a adulteress remember. And probably had a few minutes of fun in her life which obviously makes her a suitable target for the Hate. Plus I think it was the Express that was more the Daily Di?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:12 AM on October 15, 2008

It's been said before but the best way to confuse a Daily Mail reader is to tell them that illegal immigrants are the natural enemies of paedophiles.

This is priceless - the picture from the wikipedia page on the Daily Mail says all that needs to be said about the fuckwittedness of it's readers.
posted by longbaugh at 8:26 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

It's pretty hilarious to nail 'Sunny' Jim Callaghan for the horrors of decriminalization without even mentioning the Winter Of Discontent that brought in Thatcher. And I see all the other usual suspects get a look in including Europe and 'Elf And Safety; and in the latter case implying that it helped bring down the mining industry, which is just bizarre.

Odd there's no Tony 'Comprehensive Education' Crosland... or is a return to grammar schools now even beyond the pale for small-minded little-Englanders like Letts?
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:30 AM on October 15, 2008 [1 favorite]

Dame Suzi Leather-Hampsher-Monk

Daily Mail flagged as gormless.
posted by lukemeister at 9:10 AM on October 15, 2008

Holy shit, this is some hardcore crazy. Being American, I've only heard about the Daily Mail being total lowbrow fascist crap, but I never knew how true that was until just now. To wit:

On Edward Heath and the Enoch Powell "rivers of blood" speech:
Sunday, April 21, 1968, was the moment our country yielded to the sorry creed of multi-culturalism.

That evening, Edward Heath, leader of the Conservative Party, telephoned Enoch Powell and sacked him from the Shadow Cabinet for making his infamous 'Rivers Of Blood' speech about race relations.

That decision made it almost impossible for British politicians to criticise immigration for the next 40 years.

On Margaret Thatcher:
She prevented the Falkland Islands falling into the hands of a murderous junta and reminded us it was worth being British.

Holy SHIT. Even Fox News isn't this transparently ultra-right-wing.
posted by DecemberBoy at 11:31 AM on October 15, 2008

Weirdly a lot of articles form the Daily mail seem to get posted on mefi as brit news (Theres a lot of guardian and Telegraph links as well, but the Guardian links tend to be media/science/artsy stuff rather than newsy, and the Telegraph ones are all lists).

Most of the time I like to think that people just saw an interesting looking headline on Google News and didn’t really know what they were linking to.
posted by Artw at 11:43 AM on October 15, 2008

A while I go the Guardian mentioned that the Mail had massively increased it's web presence, becoming the most visited than the Guardian by posting stuff that was web/linking friendly, and actually diverging away from the paper's content in terms of political bias (not in this case though).
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 12:07 PM on October 15, 2008

She prevented the Falkland Islands falling into the hands of a murderous junta and reminded us it was worth being British.
To be fair, it *was* a murderous junta.
posted by lukemeister at 1:27 PM on October 15, 2008

Difficult to be that upset about that kind of thing when you're best mates with Pinochet.
posted by Artw at 1:32 PM on October 15, 2008

(Yet again I think about the Thatcher obit thread, it's going to be a beast!)
posted by Artw at 1:33 PM on October 15, 2008

Yet again I think about the Thatcher obit thread, it's going to be a beast!)

SLYT
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:56 PM on October 15, 2008

Unfortunately, the Daily Mail is one of the biggest-selling newspapers in Britain. I once read that it's the most widely read newspaper among college students. It seems to retain an air of middle-class respectability despite its crass, moronic editorial line.
posted by internationalfeel at 4:05 AM on October 16, 2008

It always amuses me when the pundits go on about Beeching and his railway cuts.

How come such a lowly civil servant had so much power?

The actual truth is, Beeching was doing what he was told by Tory politicians with shares in road building companies.

Two names to juggle with. Maudling and Marples.
posted by dollyknot at 4:51 AM on October 16, 2008

The actual truth is, Beeching was doing what he was told by Tory politicians with shares in road building companies.

Two names to juggle with. Maudling and Marples.

Okay, a pox on both their houses.
posted by jb at 6:53 AM on October 16, 2008