Burn the Witch

Humanity has the capacity for boundless good. It also has a dark heart with an equal measure of evil. In previous centuries, minorities were used as scapegoats for society’s ills and suffered torment, torture and death for no other reason than that they were different, followed a different religion, looked a bit funny or kept a lot of cats.

Over the centuries, we have tried to rise above such behaviour. Although it seems as if that was all in vain. If you are a smoker, a drinker or now, like to enjoy food that the state disapproves of, you are a witch, to be persecuted, like the lone woman who kept too many cats in the middle ages. Others have covered this and expressed abhorrence – and rightly so.

The 40ft giant effigy – which will cost several thousands to make – is to be paraded through the streets of Barnsley as part of a healthy eating drive.

It will form part of the mayor’s parade and summer gala in July before finally being set alight to symbolise ‘the shedding of unhealthy elements of our lifestyles’.

The controversial idea was dreamt up by NHS and council bosses in the town to fight some of the highest obesity rates in the UK.

But residents and campaign groups have reacted with fury and condemned the effigy.

Local Slimming World co-ordinator Christine Meluish, who runs weight loss groups for 11 to 15-year-olds, branded it ‘a disgrace’.

Oh, but disgrace doesn’t even begin to describe this obscenity. The de-normalising of sections of the population led to persecution of the Jews during the middle ages – as Dick points out in his piece. More recently, they and other minorities were subject to persecution during the twentieth century – along with homosexuals, the disabled, mentally ill and people who looked a bit funny. Although these days, homosexuals are the righteous’ pets, so it is those who disapprove who are subjected to the screaming opprobrium, or, worse, those who dare to suggest that a business should have the right to turn business away, for whatever reason.

Digressing a little here, I realise that during the past week, Chris Grayling’s comments have been done to death, but a brief comment is perhaps in order. He was absolutely right in what he said. It is the law that is wrong. A private business should have the right to discriminate. I have been on both ends of this. I have been turned away because I have arrived on a motorcycle. Did I use this to get fifteen minutes of fame? No, I simply went elsewhere and made damned sure that everyone knew that the landlord of that establishment was a bigot. And, frankly, having watched the two complainants in this sordid little story, I wouldn’t want them under my roof, either. Not because they are homosexual – I couldn’t care two hoots about that – but because they are  a pair of sanctimonious, preening, whining self-righteous bastards.

I have also turned business away. As a driving instructor during the late eighties and early nineties, it was not unusual to have enquiries requesting a short notice test. The caller always claimed that their instructor had let them down. This was code for their instructor advising them that they were not ready and should postpone. When a client refuses to postpone, the only thing the instructor can do is withdraw the use of the school car. I always turned away such requests because to accept them would be to damage my business and possibly my vehicle. According to the righteous discussing Grayling’s comments, businesses should be forced by law to accept business from whoever wants it. This is absurd and it only takes a cursory examination of the concept to realise this.

Returning to the original point; when the Gestapo first started to gain a foothold in Germany, they relied on people reporting others as they didn’t have enough operatives to do it themselves. So, again, the Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and people who looked a bit funny, were rounded up and persecuted. The burn the witch mentality was alive and well. An internal emey is always useful to concentrate the minds of the unthinking masses away from what is going on at the seat of government and to consolidate power. An external enemy is mighty useful, too. We have always been at war with Eurasia – or is that Eastasia? Does it matter? It is one of them, anyway.

Today, having de-normalised the smoker and well on the way to making the middle-class wine drinker equivalent to a meths addled old soak, the righteous in Britain are using these same tactics to de-normalise people who are a bit fat. Make no mistake, despite the rhetoric this is nothing to do with healthy eating – burning effigies of people who have been de-normalised is not a healthy practice and rational people do not do it*. It is deeply abhorrent, it is burning the witch, it is bullying on a grand scale and, as happened in Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, this is state sanctioned bullying. Sure, we don’t have the death camps, but the underlying behaviour, the tapping into the evil mob mentality that lurks beneath the surface is the same.

Humanity can be a force for unimaginable good. After thirteen years of a Labour government, it is becoming, once more, a force for unimaginable wickedness.

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*You may correctly assume that I disapprove of burning effigies of Guy Fawkes on November the 5^th as well.