The Definition of a Bigot

Someone who holds a different opinion to me. Catherine Bennet writing vile drivel in the Groan. This time it it the old fogeys who are in the firing line.

But even the most decent parents of the relevant generations can make unreliable role models. Although all of Miliband père’s attitudes were no doubt as peerlessly progressive as Steve Johnson’s were disgusting, many parents and grandparents would require their opinions to be glued into historical context or, better still, thoroughly expunged before they could be safely advertised as mentors. Advanced age, to judge by much current commentary, is no excuse for not thinking like a young person.

Mercifully, natural wastage means that fewer and fewer Britons are going to have to deal with relations who, in defiance of equalities legislation, persist in speaking the language or displaying the attitudes of a darker, pre-hipster age that, some of them stubbornly insist, they actively preferred.

And yet, as the swivel-eyed affair and the gay marriage debate have indicated, large numbers of these elderly individuals remain active, creating particular problems when they cling to employment with a doggedness that would be exemplary if only it didn’t also apply to their thoughts on diversity and inadvertent hate-speech. Domestically, the frugal habits of the 1940s and 50s have long been hailed by women of the Cath Kidston mindset, who can acquire, even if we have no plans actually to use, apparatus such as sewing boxes and peg-bags, knitting needles and ready-cut patchwork.

What a thoroughly nasty piece of work this woman is. She is talking about a generation that gave up its youth for the liberties that this dreadful women now enjoys (how dare they prefer that older “darker” age, how very dare they?) –  many of whom never came back. Yes, they hold different –  non PC –  opinions. This does not make them bigots. Nor, for that matter should those views be expunged because they do not fit with the modern orthodoxy. I am from a younger generation, but I despise utterly the progressives and their thought crimes, their orthodoxy of demanding respect and celebration of ideologies I abhor and sexual mores I find distasteful. They embody everything that that older generation fought against. I know who I prefer –  and if they are bigots, so be it. I’m with the bigots all the way –  except, of course, it isn’t they who are the bigots is it?

The challenge, of course, is how to deploy the best aspects of older generations – eg honour, stoicism, authentic crochet bobbins – while accommodating, or preferably purging, distressing opinions of a similar vintage.

My, Uncle Joe would have been proud. I can see him puffing up his chest in admiration from beyond the grave. These people really are the most utter, utter scum.