Archie (or, in Scotland 'Erchie')? Really, do I give a damn? It's just another pissing and shitting baby. There are millions born every day. I make sure I have a plentiful supply of sick bowls at the ready whenever the news comes on.

If my understanding is correct, last week, LBC's James O'Brien mused on how a population should react to the democratic election of Adolf Hitler. Notwithstanding that Adolf Hitler is long dead and presumably O'Brien himself might think that the outcome should not be accepted, the answer is unequivocally that the outcome should be accepted. Democracy is not a la carte, Of course, at the point where a democratically elected Hitlerian figure decides that in future there should be no democratic elections, revolutionary activity becomes fully justified though not before.

More importantly, there is the key issue of prevention and that does not imply any early bending of the rules. .This is to say that it takes more regular sorts of Governments (and Parliaments for that matter) getting themselves into a massive mess and their/our country with it for a Hitler to become so popular that it is possible for him or her to win elections. With suitable amounts of listening to the electorate, effective policy making, flexibility as opposed to arrogance and an honouring of their own rules such a situation would never arise so it will in any time in history be entirely within their own responsibilities.

O'Brien later went on to use the word "bovine" along with "charlatans" and "cheats" in relation to certain Brexit types and to describe Boris Johnson, someone who I can't stand at any price, as "weeing into No 10". Whether it was Orwell or others who it took to point this out, one of the common themes in all past extreme fascist and communist regimes has been the use of animal or similar reductive terminology to describe individuals or groups of people they oppose. And yet increasingly it is the so-called mainstream which is using this technique. Not only is that excessively grim but it gives the game away about the far right or far left authoritarian nature of those who see themselves as liberals.

Today, in a further race towards the crude end of the barrel, Sir Vince Cable, 76, launches the Lib Dem campaign under the title of "Bollocks to Brexit". He denies that this is offensive to many people and claims hilariously that the country has lost its sense of humour. Contexts matter here. Back in the late 1970s, the Sex Pistols' "Never Mind The Bollocks" was not given air time as a title on the BBC nor was it visibly listed in the charts on the wall of WH Smith. 40 odd years later and it sits easily in many places without concern be they comedy clubs or sporting grounds, music festivals or film.

But the term will be offensive to many as it falls into their letterboxes - the devout of all faiths, the over-sensitive or especially polite, some sections of the elderly and parents who do not want their young children to see that word. The liberals select what is offensive, smashing down the utterances of anyone who says things they find offensive and in terms of what they themselves don't find offensive they couldn't give a toss. Again, what they exhibit is ultra authoritarianism in the disguise of tolerance.

So much for the word. There are broader issues here. Something about the ability, or lack of, to command respect and for respect to be associated with seniority in terms of age and social position. Long gone are the Churchills and Attlees. In their place are snivelling teenager types who are not only impossible to admire but in some cases are fixated on admiring teenagers with no real experience of the world. That in many ways is the ultimate abrogation of responsibility. Who could have slept on seeing Ed Miliband all gooey eyed in audience to Ms Thunberg before it was revealed just how many air miles he had clocked up? Totally pathetic.

Incidentally, in not dissimilar vein. O'Brien is now arguably on almost a daily naval gaze about how his car spews out emissions and it is for Governments to provide people with environmentally friendly cars to drive etc etc etc. Callers ring up and say that they agree the situation is dreadful because of the bad policy makers or it is all just fine because no Government is going to interfere in what they drive. Just don't drive. Don't fly. Don't have any more children. Get your offspring not to drive and fly. It is very simple. Many of us have been following such principles for years without any discourse or fanfare. All the rest is just controversy and chit-chat for the sake of it.

Next, and more significantly, "Bollocks to Brexit" could in effect be read as "F**k Democracy" and that would probably have been the strap line if they had only had the balls. It is in that way very close to an incitement and certainly it does not help in calming unrest. And then of course there is the sheer sexism at the heart of it. "Stick Brexit Up Your C**t" would have been rejected before it hit the pages not on the grounds of its crudeness but because it was an unacceptable reference to a part of the female anatomy. Much more of this and we really will need the army to move in and sort things out.

Danny Baker was sacked today for a tweet featuring a monkey in relation to the royal birth. Now what I want to know is do people see this as just basic stupidity or is it more sinister?
I only ask because I'm normally like 'F**k off you should be able to say this or do that' type of person but even I could work out what the connotations would be and I'm crass.
So is it PC madness ? Is he just an idiot? or dies he have issues? I think the latter because of how obvious the link is, but then I think would he do something so suicidal career wise on purpose? Strange one this .

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 9th May 2019, 2:25 PM

Danny Baker was sacked today for a tweet featuring a monkey in relation to the royal birth. Now what I want to know is do people see this as just basic stupidity or is it more sinister?
I only ask because I'm normally like 'F**k off you should be able to say this or do that' type of person but even I could work out what the connotations would be and I'm crass.
So is it PC madness ? Is he just an idiot? or dies he have issues? I think the latter because of how obvious the link is, but then I think would he do something so suicidal career wise on purpose? Strange one this .

View original

He tweeted a genuine photograph of a very elegant little chimp dressed in a coat, bowler hat, trousers and shoes and holding a walking cane, coming down the steps of a building with a posh man and a posh woman on either side. He titled it "Royal baby leaves hospital".

If he wasn't pissed or coked out of his mind when he did it, he's the bravest mainstream comedian in the history of the world.

I don't think there were any racial undertones but it was badly judged. The BBC knew the social media response would be shock and horror so had to boot him. There was a time when it would have been seen as the cute and amusing photo that it is.

No I disagree totally , if you don't know that a monkey in this instance is going to be deemed extremely offensive when you post it then at best you're a fool and in no way a comedy genius.
I watch Family Guy and he does all kinds of stuff including Muslims and Jews etc but its done funny and it works. Thats the rule for me if it works its fine but that didn't . For me the only people laughing at this are deep seated racists and they're the worse kind. People who prefer a wink a nod and a nudge and send things in a direction until there's enough of them to come out the cracks and act hard on some poor bastard who's on his own.

What the f**k was he thinking of? Madness, unless he thought "F**k It, I've had enough. I might as well go out in a blaze of summat"

If we ever see him again I'll be most surprised.

Quote: Teddy Paddalack @ 9th May 2019, 3:15 PM

Thats the rule for me if it works its fine but that didn't .

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I think it doesn't work for you 'cos you're judging it as a joke about race.
It wasn't.
It's about posh people.
Undoubtedly he should have thought about it a little before he tweeted - that's what he did wrong.
I'm a long time listener of DB and "a monkey in a little suit" is trope he's used for years.
But he had to go.
Having let Jimmy Saville get away with murder for years the BBC can't be seen to let anybody get away with anything - even perceived thought crimes.

Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 9th May 2019, 3:19 PM

What the f**k was he thinking of? Madness, unless he thought "F**k It, I've had enough. I might as well go out in a blaze of summat"

View original

A fair point but I think the same thing might reasonably be said of everyone who's been awarded the Victoria Cross.

We do seem to be lurching from one extreme to the other currently. What happened to keep calm and carry on ? They should introduce a points system, as with driving penalties. The monkey undertone should be 3 points, Clarksons punching someone 12 pts.

I have never been a fan of Danny Baker or his schtick which is possibly a bit surprising given in theory he should tick many of my boxes - Intelligent working class Londoner of a certain age, music, sport and other wide ranging interests, radio presenter, a fascination with and a unique way with words. Of the two Dannys, I much prefer Kelly whose style is less shrill, less gabbled, less in-your-face and to my mind less self-congratulatory. But I do think here Baker was innocently colour blind rather than evil in any excessive colour consciousness. In his rush to convey a point about royalty (and perhaps inequalities - for what else is, quote, "red sauce"?), any thoughts about skin colour momentarily went out of the window.

There can, I suppose, be debate about his apology which while fulsome perhaps also hinted in his own defence of a punishment which was overly heavy (he had winged loud and long when required to go from BBC Radio London because of cut backs : I had considerable sympathy what with having had my own redundancy until he somewhat laid into the programme of Jo Good). So, it is often a mixed bag with him and having read the tweets which followed, I am especially disappointed though not surprised that he inserts an apostrophe into the word "its" where it is inappropriate. Sometimes people's reputations - here it's for word skills - are more in line with their self-publicity than with the closest scrutiny.

One thing no one has mentioned is Baker is a Millwall supporter. For that reason he was never going to be given a chance.

So they aren't going to give Archie a title. Imagine him growing up and asking why...and his dad saying to him..."Uh...yeah...you could have been a prince, but we just...uh...thought...nah." ...as he's shown his future home, all ready for him when he moves out...above some shops in Balham.

[quote name="Lazzard" post="1202925" date="9th May 2019, 3:53 PM"]I think it doesn't work for you 'cos you're judging it as a joke about race.
It wasn't.
It's about posh people.

I know what you mean Lazzard and to an extent I agree but when you put a monkey in as the baby in a mixed race couple its like painting a watch on the the Mona Lisa and then expecting them to see the watch only and then arguing the toss about it not being about the Mona Lisa at all.
I don't think it was sinister but he could have gone with a million images that made his point without that implication
but I suspect that in his eagerness to be among the first he shot himself in the foot. And as someone who has shot themselves in both feet on numerous occasions myself I should know .

It was a daft mistake that anyone can make, especially on Twitter.
A quick reply with no thought of the connotations and a world of shame is upon you.
He's lost his livelihood with it. Is that a just punishment for a careless mistake?
Hurty feelings is now almost a crime with the baying righteous mob.

An official apology and keep your head down for a while would have sufficed but no, it'll follow him for the rest of his life as an out and out racist.
The crowd have drawn blood and will wait in their lair for the next one who strays.

Baker Again

(This is about the best I can do to be thoughtful. fair and constructive in the circumstances : I have had to work my mind quite hard on this)

1. Possibly a Victim - But, God Forbid, Has Chris Evans Got To Help Him Out Again?

I have had some further thoughts now that I have read other people's comments and heard his interview. Who produced the picture and why haven't they been named? Who sent it to him? And was it something which could be defined as a set up (i) given that he has used the phrase "monkey in a suit" regularly and also (ii) taking into account that many would now see the BBC as more prejudiced against white, heterosexual men of working class roots, perhaps especially South London ones, than against anyone else. Was this the moment when a way was seen for making him the fall guy?

Arguably, the only thing that has saved him so far is the fact that he has accumulated money along the way and is hence effectively partially one of the Establishment's own. I know that in actuality there have been complexities in terms of his wealth so that he may not be as wealthy as some might assume. Nevertheless he is one of those characters who bigs up his early roots whatever the considerable financial leaps forward which followed only then perhaps to reduce. Well, not perhaps. A well known ginger nut from Scouse Merseyside lent him £30,000. Oh the humiliation of it all.

2. The Twittersphere is One Thing - Did We Get This Sort of Thing With Hogarth?

But then, I think, while we are in the area of history, I do have questions about this apparent idea of his, if I have heard him correctly, that the "monkey in a suit" principle goes back many decades or even centuries more generally. That is, that it was an accepted concept - what in paintings or cartoons? - among many in times gone by that the rich were lampooned in this way. Maybe they were at times but widely? Really? I'm not wholly convinced.

I do "get" the idea of it vis a vis incompetence of people in power. Bureaucrats and so on as monkeys in suits. I have described myself as a monkey (not in a suit) when it comes to painting and decorating as it is something that I have consistently proven unable to do. The paint ends up on me. The suited version, though, does not translate to a royal baby who is not a bureaucrat and has no power.

So then I suppose it goes to old phrases like "they have made a monkey out of you". Sometimes "Charlie" or "right Charlie" is in that phrase instead of "monkey" and it is very easy to hear in the mind Baker saying it. It is wholly in his style. Yet surely that is more connected with being made to look a fool or at least being placed in a regrettable position. I suppose it could be said that anyone born into royalty, including this baby, is in a regrettable position with the responsibilities and focus which go with it but it doesn't quite work as a gag here and the irony is that all of this has ended up applying to DB himself.

So, I can't quite see such links as being anything but extremely tenuous and to reiterate we are talking gags (of all kinds) here. The same tenuous nature could be found in yet another "monkey" phrase which is "too much monkey business" pertaining perhaps to shenanigans if one can be so Irish these days or hanky panky. Again, in application to a baby it simply doesn't work. And similarly to yet another one, "monkeying around" which could just about imply "hey, kids, this royal stuff is casual and entirely inconsequential"but only in a rather ham-fisted, distinctly non Hogarthian, sense.

3. The Power of Hooligans Over a Buried Communist Psyche? - The Jury Is Out

So here's a googly. Given his intelligence, I would be prepared to consider that way back in the mists of time and now out of his immediate consciousness, he may - just may - have looked at the dialogue around monkey imagery and racism and thought as an alternative to banning it to simply try turning it on its head. In other words, that the toffs of Empire could be the monkeys so that no one else had to be (and, yes, some of the above feeds into this slightly by connotation). In other words, the instinct was the very opposite of racism and diverted onto class.

In accepting this as a possibility - that toffs as monkeys are more about DB's own original thinking rather than anything pronounced from British history - one could see how all of the recent stuff about this area in football could have brought that countering impulse again to the fore. This is not to say that its application to this birth wasn't crass in the extreme or that somewhere in the mix there might not have been some sort of mildly mischievous unconscious testing.

The latter though does not imply anything especially sinister. An intelligent - almost intellectual - testing would be of the extent to which multiculturalism in royalty can now be received generally as normality with some capacity to withstand old fashioned tropes and in contrast of the extent we are required to continue to see it as exceptional. Maybe the lads (sic) on the terraces (sic) have a view on this, what with their penchant for bling and the need for more Indian Sub-Continent (sic) GPs on the NHS. For the time being, I don't.

4. Archie in the Multicultural Establishment Bunker : An Enduring Symbol For The Plebs

But clearly, the BBC and presumably the rest of the establishment have decided with their decision which takes no previous history of Baker's non-racism into account that the baby's family history must remain uppermost in the public's mind. That is to say that Archie will not be allowed simply to be a person or even a royal person but has been brought into this world to be a person of mixed heritage. I am not saying that this is a good thing or a bad thing but at least we now know. It has been decided by the powers that be that upper class multiculturalism is to be seen by Joe and Jo Soap as special and unusual.

And we also know, I think, that middle aged men of white working class origins are now as dispensable to the establishment and its broadcasters as, say, elderly women, whatever their political history. And that this is mostly because the BBC and its ilk are soaked through with tropes against those categories of people which really do go back to the 19th Century; they are entirely unapologetic about that fact (mainly because to accept anything of the working class, white or multicultural, involves money reallocation rather than language); and they will be until the end of time.

Identity politics are an absolute godsend for the liberal rich, white or multicultural. They can stretch arguments for fairness to the nth degree and in that process no money ever needs to go out of their households.