No, sorry, it’s not what you’re thinking. Unfortunately.
It’s just that I can’t sleep tonight ‘cos I’ve got all sorts of crap going through my head, and so I just thought I’d post something that would cheer me up when I looked at the thread-title. Sorry.
But what an absolute ocean-going twat-basket isn’t he? Another self-lionising journo, he’s done absolutely nothing of any worth whatsoever in his entire working (hah!) life and now here he is being glad-handed into this new ‘Office for Students’. On the basis of what? Nothing other than the Brexit-febrile expediency that passes for political leadership these days.
Theresa May, you are weak, craven, cynical and shameless; history will not look kindly on you.
And there goes the last Toby Young free area on the internet…
You’re absolutely right of course…but he’s just been enthusiastically endorsed by Boris Johnson, so his days are numbered, possibly…
Didn’t one of his many tirades concern the building of wheelchair ramps in schools?
His angle being that mixing those students who might need such structures to enter the school with “normal” students was “political correctness gone mad!”
Or did I just dream that?
I am a fifty-four year old worker being interviewed for a position in a reputable, public sector business. I am not fully qualified for this position, but I have experience in other departments and I come recommended by senior management. The senior manager’s brother is conducting the interview and I think it goes fairly well, and head home with optimism.
I am quietly confident about getting the position, however I am also aware that my past may come back to haunt me so when I get home I decide to go through social media and delete every comment I think may cause offense – just to be sure. This ends up being about 42,000 tweets.
Unbeknowst to me, however, the office staff have already decided to look me up on social media beforehand, and they discover a handful (no, make that much more than a handful) of derogatory tweets and comments. Some of the staff discuss what they’ve seen with their line manager, who immediately makes the decision not to employ me and instead hire somebody less controversial and more suitable.
None of this happened of course, because, you know, politics.
And the boss writes it off as ‘caustic wit’, though subordinates of the new employee would be well advised tpnot to test the boundaries of the apparently permissible (though hastily deleted) ‘bantz’.
Young’s schtick is that’s he’s a loathesome man, so he can hardly complain when people take him at his word and point out the evidence he has so abundantly provided in support of his thesis.
“I hope people will judge me on my actions.” – Toby Young, 2018
That’s what they’re doing, Toby.
@jeff
Can I just applaud the use of the phrase “ocean going twat basket”?
Seconded, Mr Chairman.
And if you need a Thirder, I’m it.
*inclines head discreetly, in gracious acknowledgment*
All day, I’ve been thinking about what an ocean going twat basket might actually look like. Would it be a coracle type affair? Waterproofed with one of Tobe’s Savile Row DJ’s stretched over its simple frame? Perhaps a two berth cabin, with a single hob stove, and a copy of G. M. Popplethwaite’s ‘Navigating the Bristol Channel’ tucked inside the forward locker?
And another thing. Is Toby in the boat, attempting to navigate and steer, or is he the actual coracle – in a Toby Tugs style?
Knowing him he’d prefer it Toby Juggs style.
These are important questions and, in a free and open society, it is right that they be asked.
In answer, I can say that an OGTB is all of these things. And yet, essentially, it is more.
And also less.
I like what @tony-japanese did up there. Imagine this much slack being cut for anyone you might know.
Some of his tweets referred to Padma Lakshi, presenter of the Top Chef TV programme. Initially, I put it down to detached Loaded-era laddism. But it was in 2009 – when he would have been 46. And he was involved with the show as a judge, so he was working with her at the time. One tweet says he is in the same hotel suite as her (#carefulwhatyouwishfor) and he’s letting Twitter know that her breasts are much bigger now she’s pregnant.
Again, imagine a colleague at your place of work doing that. Good-natured chuckles, back-slaps and “what-is-he-likes” all round? What do you think?
“Oh that Toby! He’s MAD he is”
“Now here’s a story in a comical paper
About our hero and his jug.
But trouble lurks in every paper
Making Toby look a dickhead”
I’ve no idea who this Toby Young chap is. He doesn’t seem to be anyone of any importance.
He’s bald, so is beneath pity anyway.
That’s exactly what a massive alopecist would say!!!
He’s Simon Pegg. Or at least he was.
I think Kathy Burke spoke for the nation when she tweeted in one syllable words to Boris Johnson in response to his tweet praising Young.
‘He’s a cunt and so are you’.
Lovely. Give her some BRAAAAHHHN cake.
Could it be that ol’ Tobe has usurped Rees-Mogg’s natural position as Cunt Of The Month?
Boris and Farage are out of the running now, because nobody gives a shit about either of them any more.
Coming up the inside straight is Simon Dudley, the Windsor Council leader, who wants homeless people cleared off the streets for Prince Harry & Meaghan Markle’s upcoming wedding. He’s also on the board of the Government’s housing agency.
Is it me..? Politics seems to have gone to hell in a handcart in the last few years, and maybe I was just being naive in the past, but the shamelessness of this lot beggars belief. As with Trump, the modus operandi appears to be ‘who is the person who is least appropriate and will upset the most people’…’ah, yes, that mate of mine…bit of a cunt, but he’s on our side and we have enough dirt on him to make sure he stays on message’.
Can’t help feeling they are heading for a huge reckoning at some stage as the house of cards collapses….let’s hope so.
Coarsening of discourse through social media? It’s easier to get people behind a vacuous slogan (Make America Great Again!’) or a word (I felt an uneasy stirring when I first heard the term Brexit) than a manifesto or other reasoned policies. That insight is hardly new of course, and I’m sure I have been guilty of slogan hurling on social media myself, but it can’t be good for the political culture when everyone’s primary tactic is to win the internet war.
There again “Strong And Stable” was a dismal failure, so it’s not just a matter of slogans and buzzwords.
There needs to be a push in the right place at the right time to set things in motion too.
House Of Cards has indeed collapsed 😉
The currently still only Mr Young answers back into today’s Times, under a heading relating to his self-proclaimed addiction to porn. (No, I don’t know why I bought the Times today either)
Julie Burchill is to blame. When she launched her ill fated and unlamented enterprise The Modern Review, she installed Young as the editor.
Apart from her, the other contributor of note was Gary Bushell.
Those three in the same office at the same time? Where were the feckin’ IRA when you needed them? Lazy bastards…
You’re avin’ a laugh ain’t yer?
“Jaguar: may puncture your jugular with dagger-like teeth, but at least it won’t bang on about tits in the needlessly elaborate vocabulary of a public school prefect and then steal your pudding.”
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/features/five-deadly-carnivores-youd-rather-sit-next-to-at-a-wedding-than-toby-young-20180108141924
Relax everyone, he’s resigned. Had become a distraction natch.
After spending the last six weeks waking up to England getting hammered by Australia it’s great to finally hear some good news in the morning!
Good news indeed.
However, Young’s twatbasketry continues to be the gift that keeps on giving – here’s his statement today:
“The caricature drawn of me in the last seven days, particularly on social media, has been unrecognisable to anyone who knows me.” But he conceded: “Some of the things I said before I got involved in education, when I was a journalistic provocateur, were either ill-judged or just plain wrong – and I unreservedly apologise.”
But, y’see, @toadmeister, the thing is, we the public don’t know you in the way your crony chums do; all we, the public, know of you is what you’ve said in the media, entirely of your own volition, over the past 20-30 years or so. And we the public have judged you on that: we don’t like you, and we have no respect for you. But as you’re only a [*sigh*] ‘provocative’, self-mythologising, Po-Mo journo, with no worth in, or impact upon, on the real world, we the public have generally been relaxed about ignoring you.
But when it comes to you being slotted-into a role which does have a bearing on real life and real organisations and real people with decades of hard-earned professional knowledge and experience, then, yes, we the public are entitled to vigorously express our disgust.
And that’s what’s happened here.
And, judging by your statement today, you still don’t get it, do you?
A lot of people who didn’t know who he was now know who he is. And what he is.
Hurrah!
I didn’t know who he was, and now thanks to his timely resignation, I will hopefully never have to bother investing the time to find out.
Never seen How to Lose Friends & Alienate People with Simon Pegg playing him? It’s not a bad film. Mind you, it’s not particularly good either.
Slain by his own yobby tongue.
The arrogance of the initial appointment would be staggering were it not so common these days. It’s characteristic of Governments who have been in power for a long time and who feel safe to start taking the lazy view that “we can do whatever we want and get away with it”. Eventually someone takes notice the Government becomes tarred with sleaze, and ends up losing the next election. But you’re looking here at a Government with a tiny majority. The blessed Theresa must have been furious when this was brought to her attention. Jo Johnson’s demotion is richly deserved
It was, I think, a pitiful attempt to get Down With Da Yoof. “Toby Young… he’s got a Twitter account and he’s horrible. Young people like that, don’t they? He’s even called young!”
A friend of mine was at university with him and has endorsed the view that Young was, indeed, a scumbag and universally loathed by all normal people who came into contact with him.
It definitely takes a certain… something… to see the events described in this article as being to do with the non-existence of true friendship, rather than a rather more obvious conclusion:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/the-day-i-stopped-believing-in-the-friendship-myth/
It would take a heart of stone not to smirk at this.
That’s extraordinary – and very funny. Like David Brent describing a night out with youngsters. “You lot couldn’t keep up with me!” was his take on being left alone in a pub when everyone else ran off while he was at the bar.
Even his caricature is punchable.
Just in case anyone should be in doubt as to the company TY’s been keeping. this:
http://londonstudent.coop/news/2018/01/10/exposed-london-eugenics-conferences-neo-nazi-links/
Also reported on by Private Eye, should you require additional information about who he’s been hobnobbing with.
Other news outlets to follow?
… and now the country has been snubbed by Donald Trump.
It feels SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO good.
Waking up to news stories like these is what we all need … please, please, keep ’em coming.
The bit about the property deal making him feel sour actually rings true, but even if that was the real reason for cancelling the visit (it isn’t) it does no credit to the president of a country not to open the embassy of an ally just because he doesn’t like the way the land values stack up.
His excuses are bollocks.
He knows he’ll get a really hostile reception which will be televised world-wide and he’s bottled it.
I haven’t been on a political demo in the last 30 years at least, but I’d been looking forward to turning out and “greeting” President Trump if he showed his face here for the embassy opening.