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Have we reached ‘peak silly’?

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I feel that the world is becoming sillier, but maybe has reached a limit. For example band/act names. We had Pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs pigs on here a couple of days ago. Then there’s the rapper Pooh Shiesty. Let’s hope he doesn’t release his own range of fragrances soon. Hard to imagine what his ‘turn’ is.

It’s not just band names, I’m sure there are plenty of other examples of peak silly..?

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  2. I quite like a bit of peak silly, daft names etc, cheers you up on a gloomy wet autumn morning.

    It’s the stuff like corporate bollocks speak that is really properly silly as we have discussed.

      • If there was a general election tomorrow he would walk it based on a Jimmy Savile impersonation (plus a perceived poshness). Beyond silly and well into the zone of farcical.

        • Farcical, well I believe he drops his trousers from time to time.

          Maybe if Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel stands against him it would split the vote.

        • The insistence on seeing Boris Johnson in this way is the reason he keeps winning things.

          I think he’s bloody awful, but I also think the failure to see why plenty of people like him (quite a lot, for reasons which have nothing to do with their shallowness, stupidity or deference) is a big part of what got us Brexit and his government in the first place.

          • I know, but I honestly don’t know what appeals to voters other than the shallow caricature. I’ve been observing him for decades since his ambitions first became clear, and he’s the same person I saw and whose vapid articles I read then. Other than some vaguely libertarian identity (for which read ‘let someone else worry about it’) I still have no idea what he’s for, what anyone can see to vote in favour of.

            • Off the top of my head list of reasons people will vote for Boris Johnson:

              * He delivered Brexit, which some people wanted and some people were simply sick of hearing about

              * Successful vaccine rollout

              * Furlough scheme

              * He’s perceived to have done a good job of balancing health concerns and other economic/social concerns in his COVID response

              * He doesn’t “stand for” anything. He’s clearly not ideological. To the left, this translates as a moral deficiency. To the voters, it looks like pragmatism, which they like

              * Rightly or wrongly, he presents a positive future for the country, rather than telling everyone they need to feel perpetually guilty, inferior and doomed. Voters have always been partial to this, the mad bastards

              * His critics are unbelievably shrill and criticise him for everything, including things he hasn’t got wrong or hasn’t yet got wrong. A lot of people have stopped listening to most of them accordingly. I know I have

              * Levelling up agenda

              * Total lack of quality alternatives – just look at the dismal choices available at the last election

              * His chancellor appears to be competent and doesn’t want to overthrow capitalism

              * Imminent increase to minimum wage

              * Unlike a lot of his opponents, and despite his privileged background, he seems to understand where the public’s heads are at and doesn’t get drawn into stupid social media arguments where he’ll be forced to say things that are against the national consensus for zero political gain (eg trans rights)

              I could do on. I won’t vote for him; I’ve never voted Tory and he’s said/done things I consider racist. But then, I’d say the same of Corbyn and plenty of people held their nose/deluded themselves and voted for him, so maybe we shouldn’t be surprised about what people are willing to overlook. Yes, yes – you could make similar arguments about Blair.

              I do think that an awful lot of people hold him responsible for Brexit, hate him with an eternal passion and have their perception of him utterly skewed as a result.

              In addition to getting himself elected, as a Tory, to be mayor of London, one of the most left-leaning areas of the entire country, he also delivered the biggest electoral trouncing for a generation. He’s empirically “good” at politics. At actual leadership, I have my reservations, but he’s nowhere near as bad as some like to pretend for their own comfort. That’s what the county sees, that’s what they’ll vote for.

              Not up for an argument about any of the bullet points above. I’m simply saying that’s the perception in the country at large and you won’t overturn it by endlessly parping on about how he has funny hair, an expensive education and too many kids by too many different mothers.

              Central bullet point: unless the Tories decide to knife him (which they might) or he does something truly self-destructive, Labour needs to get serious if they want to beat this guy, because he’s good. It’s not a mystery why people vote for him, and it’s not because they’re all fools. It’s also not some sort of contemptible trick to occasionally listen to the public and give them what they want, instead of talking to them like errant children.

              • Dead on.

                It’s remarkable how many people, including former allies like Cummings, thought they were the clever ones who were good at politics, and got roundly drubbed by the bloke they all said was a fool.

                Boris Johnson is extremely good at politics. Not dumbed down, 2021, Gogglebox, millennial noddy politics for morons – actual politics. I don’t know how many times you can say “underestimate him at your peril” to people who keep underestimating him and end up beaten.

                If he’d come of political age in the Blair era, would he have ended up PM? I don’t know, but he’d have been a lot more dangerous a LOTO than any of the actual ones at the time. I think we have to accept, unless we need to deny it for personal reasons, that he’d have been a big noise in politics in any generation. He’s not there purely cos everyone else is useless, though they are: he’s just plain good at it.

                I used to want to deny it too, by the way. Changing your mind in the light of obvious facts, though, seems to me a good thing.

              • Thanks. That’s a series of good points. I have to try to see beyond my own instinctive, gut-deep loathing of him (which stretches a good decade further back than Brexit).

              • I think the day Gordon Brown called ordinary voter Gillian Duffy a bigot was the moment that the Tories really started being seen as the party in tune with the common man and Labour the party of the snobby elite, thereby paving the way for Johnson.

                • I think you’re probably right. And a lot of the people who will say “but she WAS” (as if that’s the point) are the same ones who want to call Johnson / Brexit voters thick gammons and wonder why they’re not charmed and persuaded by that behaviour.

                • Quite probably. But that particular issue has only become worse with time.

                  At the last election you didn’t have to travel far to come across people who’d had literal arguments with Labour activists on their doorsteps, because the clear perception was that the voters are all thick as mince and need to be re-educated by the party.

                  Even if you think it, why in god’s name would you make it so blindingly obvious?

              • Is he that popular personally? The last polling I saw on him as Prime Minister (YouGov) had 32% saying he was doing well and 60% badly. His personal popularity has never been that high. He had a majority in his constituency of 7,000 which sounds okay until you see that the Labour candidate was a 25 year old Student Union official.

                He may be a factor in voting Conservative, but there are probably broader issues as well.

              • I agree with all that Bingo. Well said. His knack for a snappy photo shoot or 30 second memorable video clip is unerring. It just reinforces all of the above and isn’t some lucky accident even if it looks like it is. The best example being the JCB through the brick wall with Brexit written on it. Tik tok politics for the 21st century. Bastard…

                • And then you have to compare this with the furrowed-brow earnestness of the younger people left, who are actually right about everything, but oh fuck me do they make a song and dance about showing it. Who are the majority going to prefer? The thumbs-aloft lovable mop top who goes for middle-of-the-road populism, or the finger-in-your-face sneer of the permanent outsider? It’s McCartney v. Lennon, is what I’m saying.

                    • I avoid talking about politics face-to-face like the plague – it rarely comes up in the archival/sport stuff I do, but when it does, I’m out the building for 10 minutes.

                      Doesn’t stop me:
                      1. thinking that c. 2021 vast swathes of the public are as thick as pig-shite and many don’t seem to actually care about anything (sue me, I didn’t vote for Corbyn. I converge once a year with them – watching Strictly on Saturday evenings), and…more importantly…

                      2. the way to a good life is to, on a personal level, strive to be the polar opposite of Johnson in absolutely every situation/aspect possible, and I genuinely can’t think of an exception to that rule. I want absolutely nothing he stands for and absolutely nothing he might have. I live an easier life than him, I’m better looking than him… oh, look, there’s the sea. What can he see now? Downing Street in 2021. Triffic!

                      Doing a huge amount of research at the moment on six different topics (they get added to as I pass them in the old papers)… not scrimping on any of it… my mantra is “What would Johnson do?”… answer: he’d do the bare minimum, so I’m exploring all of it.

                      The fact it largely keeps me away from 2021 is simply an added bonus.

                    • @deramdaze : on doing the bare minimum. I like to apply the standard of what I think would happen if you asked someone to look after your cat while you were away. Starmer, uncharismatic though he is, I think would set himself reminders and go out of his way to do what he had been asked and agreed to even if it caused him great inconvenience. Johnson, I think, would either have something better to do and leave the cat to starve, or let it escape then forget about it, and in either case not think it was his fault because he doesn’t take personal responsibility for anything.

                    • Re: Johnson as your cat-minder.
                      He would get someone else (anyone else) to do it and not give it a moment’s thought thereafter. If it went OK he’d take the credit, if it went badly he’d blame whoever he assigned the job to.

                • Whilst I agree entirely with @deramdaze below in his assessment of Johnson, I think Bingo’s post here is brilliantly spot on and deserves a thread of its own (kind of hilarious and apt that a discussion of Johnson has appeared under a jokey thread about silly band names).

                  Another thing Johnson has been brilliant at is somehow completely disassociating himself and the current Tory government with the actions of the Cameron and Osborne era. Rachel Reeves did her best today to point out that almost all of the problems Johnson Sunak and colleagues say they are putting right are the result of a decade of Tory rule, but it won’t stick. He is seen as a completely new start, instead of a continuation as, for example, Major and Brown were viewed.

                  Also, @hedgepig is right on the diversity point. Whatever you think of them (not a lot in my case), Priti Patel, Kwasi Kwarteng, Rishi Sunak, James Cleverley, Alok Sharma, Sajid Javid, Nadim Zahawi are all in the Cabinet and several are potential next leaders. Labour are getting better but with the exception of David Lammy and Lisa Nandy they dont have anyone senior from an ethnic minority. Someof the usual suspect voices on the left have hardly helped by essentially saying that the Tories above may be Black or Asian, but they are the wrong kind of Black or Asian (wealthy, public school educated; in the case of Patel even from the wrong caste) – criticism which is implictly racist in itself because it implies that all people from an ethnic minority should comply to a particular political stereotype; even that they shouldn’t aspire to being rich and successful. Which is hardly the way to attract minority ethnic voters to your point of view.

              • I have made a point of talking to people who are Tory supporters recently in an effort to understand all this, and it is pretty much as Bingo details.

                Firstly, there were two family members…Essex living 60 something Brexit supporters who live in areas with quite high proportions of, in their words, ‘immigrants’, visibly crumbling public services, and no real interest in ‘politics’. My sister voted Brexit to stop the illegal immigrants and the Muslims coming in (yes, really). They both totally accept that Johnson is a liar (but all politicians are, apparantly) and Brexit is a bit of a mess, but he’s a laugh and isn’t serious….and that is the point, isn’t it? He appears as an anti-politician, and most people just want to be left alone and not have to think seriously about tricky choices. They also hate Sadiq Khan with a frightening passion.

                Another recent comversation was with a young Conservative member who told me that no one in the party likes him (think about it….the majority of Conservatives are morally conservative), but they elected him leader because he wins (see above).

                    • Rather uncomfortably for the “racist Tories” narrative, though, the actual diversity record of the Tories in government seems to be rather better than Labour’s.

                      The fact is, the Tories aren’t racist. They’re pragmatists. They don’t give a shit as long as they win.
                      Strikes me that’s probably equally true of their voter base.

                  • The feelings were obviously so visceral I didn’t push it – obviously he is Labour mayor, which they can’t abide, but there is certainly a racist element. As @hedgepig says below, they will ignore race if it suits them.

                    • I can recall racist work colleagues in the past who liked the one black person they worked with all the time.
                      “Oh yeah, Joe. He’s OK. But he’s not like the rest of them.”
                      The Rest Of Them being black people they’ve never had any dealings with at all.

                    • I worked with a guy like that. After a racist tirade, the black transport manager protested and Terry said, “Not you Bob, you’re one of us.” Terry was from a London Irish family so his parents probably had their own tales of discrimination.

                    • I’m not sure it’s as simple as racists having that one ethnic they quite like. Here‘s a different perspective…

                      My best mate is first generation British-Chinese. His parents came to this country in the 70s from rural China with pretty much nothing. They worked their arses off (multiple jobs), sent their kids to the best schools they could afford and demanded they excel. Said friend is now a very successful lawyer. His siblings have done similarly well for themselves.

                      The entire family votes Tory. When I talk to my friend about it, his view is that the Labour Party wants people from ethnic minority backgrounds to conform to certain fixed templates (generally: victimhood), whereas the Tories, and particularly Thatcher, created conditions in which they could work their way up, which was all they wanted/needed. When he looks at the front benches, that’s what he sees in evidence, time and again; the Tories have their issues, but – per hedgepig above – they like winning and they’ll appoint whoever they think will get the job done, regardless of colour.

                      He’s not the only person I’ve heard this from, by any means. My mates from different ethnic backgrounds tend to skew more towards Labour, but most of the Tory voters share the above view, to some degree, particularly if they’re from families who perceive that their hard work has enabled them to improve their own lot. I would imagine if you asked Priti Patel for her thoughts on the matter you’d hear something similar.

  8. Verbose and infantile cereal packets that are aimed at adults. “Do something outrageous! Buy some bongos! Because our cereal is made by Jon and Minty, who are obsessive about just how loose and tumbly our oats are! With love from Jon and Minty xxx”

    Also cereal cafes, somehow very ‘Grand Royal’ and ‘vinyl’. For giant babies.

    Cultural appropriation by left wing writers who hate cultural appropriation. “We be vibin’ so hard right now on Bennifer!”

  10. To paraphrase Dolly Parton, it takes a lot of intelligence to be that silly. Recently, the Primeminister struggled clumsily with an umbrella at a sombre occasion. You can see the Mr Bean-type scenario unfold. Lots of outrage over this but this is his election-winning persona in action. No one there was offended.

    In this next clip we see an exchange with Macron where we see Johnson put his foot up on a small table for a split second, as a joke. This was freeze-framed and presented as if this was Johnson’s posture for the entire meeting and everyone was offended. Again, not true.

    I think he’s an awful Primeminister and I think he will be undone by his own actions. Probably doubling-down on something really bad and making out it’s all OK. Raw sewage in the waterways, for example.

  12. There are some important points made up there about how hard it is to talk about body parts and functions in a non-coy, and non-humorous way. Even the proper names are considered rude. Actually this has really got me thinking; I wonder if we trivialise topics as a society when they are too complicated to deal with a lot of the time. Thus making them more complicated.

        • Covid only seems to be targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine
          Covid seems only to be targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine
          Covid seems to only be targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine
          Covid seems to be only targeting people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine
          Covid seems to be targeting only people who didn’t get that ridiculous vaccine

          Seems a shame that one of the five choices above is excluded from validity – discrimination!

          • @salwarpe

            Or to paraphrase the late great Benny Green

            What IS this thing called COVID?

            What is THIS thing called COVID?

            What is this THING called COVID?

            What is this thing CALLED COVID?

            What is this thing called, COVID?

            The above would really benefit from italics but unfortunately the AW eschews such typographical niceties…

            • No, it doesn’t. You need to type a bit of old-skool HTML is all.

              To turn italics on:
              (the pointy bracket to the right of the M key)
              (the letter i to set italic mode)
              (the pointy bracket to the left of the / key)

              the text you want in italics

              And off again:
              (the pointy bracket to the right of the M key)
              (forward stroke / to end the mode)
              (the letter i)
              (the pointy bracket to the left of the / key)

              No round brackets, no spaces.

    • That’s terrific. I have to go and see a relative who’s an antivaxxer about a will I’m executing and will mention in passing, “you know I recently read something on the internet that made me think maybe there’s something to what you guys have been saying after all…”

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