Mischief

In an ill conceived experiment ( here http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2012/09/an-expeeriment.html ) Mr Hitchens at the MoS is trying to find out how the Internet works and why the whole of the on-line world is against him.

He's written some quotes that it looks like he'll be searching for to see how the evil monster google and it's chatty bastard son Twitter ignore his "sensible" pronouncements and pounce like a tramp on a sandwich on his more frequent insane statements. He believes these won't make it on-line.

Well here they are, that's his goose cooked :-)

“Peter Hitchens believes that numbers prove plenty. He also thinks that Twitter is an electronic left-wing mob”

"If I say here that “Peter Hitchens says universities should select their students on merit, not in accordance with some egalitarian formula”, will these words find their way on to the web?" Yep they will Peter my angry friend.

"Peter Hitchens says that political correctness has gone too far. If I want to call a lady darling and give her a friendly squeeze on the rump to show my gratitude for her help picking out a fine vintage alcopop then I should should not have to suffer the indignity of being arrested in my own squat."

That last one doesn't seem right. I think my copy & paste function has let me down. Here's a picture taken in a pub to show how sorry I am.

Soz Peter.

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My mate Peter

Got into an online 'discussion' about the merits of drug legalisation with Mr Hitchens on his blog.

Watch the fun here...

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/10/this-is-no-supercam-just-ted-heath-mk-2-complete-with-his-own-thought-police.html

and

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2011/10/black-labradors-bite-master-shock-.html

My view is that the criminalisation of drugs leads to more misery, through the violent supply chain, than would be caused by the subsequent public health issues legalisation brought.

Peter's argument is that if we legalised drugs civilisation would end and we'd be ruled by cruel Chinese masters. No really that's what he thinks.

And they say smoking weed makes you paranoid!

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J'accuse Peter

In his Sunday Mail column this week 50's Teddy-boy fan Peter Hitchens dares people to accuse him of 'moral panic'. Why - in this specific case - would you want to accuse the perennially grumpy old sod of moral panic you may ask? Well Peter does his best to regale us of a horrible case of persecution, bullying and intimidation that were heaped upon the undeserving Fiona Pilkington and her daughter.

These horrendous events are a clear demonstration that the world has slid into a mire of lefty lawlessness with benefit baddies running amok. His main stab at a point revolves around the fact that these heinous type of events did not occur when there was fear of the law. He seems to think that the past was a country bereft of evil, although if you do a quick search you'll find plenty of cases of people coming forward with their horror stories of abuse and harm inflicted on the vulnerable by people in positions of power; nuns & priests for instance.

Perhaps Peter pines for an age where there seems to be much less vicious crime purely because it's reported less. Hear no evil, speak no evil so there can't be any evil?

That's not Peter's view of course he believes that it's a fear or reluctance of intervention by authorities that allows offenders to get away with their actions. As he paraphrases them "We can do anything we want..." Why can they do anything they want? Surely because no one is stopping them.

A little further down his rant - past a piece whimsically praising stay at home mothers and pinafores - he tells a tale of a stroll through modern Britain, presumably taken by himself. In this stroll he comes across a "Menacing young man" who looks like he's going to attack a group of young women with pushchairs. Does Peter - a man in a position of authority, a respectable pillar of the community, a guiding light and example to millions of readers - intervene and try to protect these young women vulnerable to attack. Well you'd imagine he would, he spent a few hundred words not far up the page criticising a lack of intervention, but of course he doesn't. Apparently there's no sign of authority and he's not interested in helping. He's not interested in making the country better, he's not interested in looking out for the weak, he's not interested in challenging offenders.

He is interested in spying on a scene of potential violent crime, writing about this as an increasing amount of evidence of 'moral panic' in modern Britain and pocketing a big fat cheque for the privilege though.

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He's not a trained scientist but...

Mr Hitchens asks the questions science has already answered.

Today he attacks the Icelandic elephant in the room:

I think this might be it Peter. Oh, or this.

Not a computer simulation - a real ash cloud.

Of course non of this would never have happened if were 1953. Oh if only we were living in the hacylon days of TB, polio and extreme poverty. A pathetic imaginary ash cloud wouldn't have stopped the airlines in those days.

They were made of sterner stuff.

Propellers. Tweet

Isn't that your job Peter?

I think Peter Hitchens may have been taking journalism lessons from Richard Littlejohn. In his sunday rant he asks this rather random question.

This raises two points;

Firstly why does he think that taking antidepressants would lead to going mental in a shopping centre? Does he imagine that the 31 million prescriptions written every year for these drugs lead to an increase in psychotic rampages and has he any evidence of this? Although as he showed in his debate on second hand smoking over at Angry Mob his grasp of science is fragile to say the least.

Secondly, if he thinks prescribing antidepressants may be a contributing factor isn't it his job to find this out? I believe he's a journalist after all. Tweet