Oh Christ, he’s on about mental health again. Can’t he just give it a rest? Just moan and whinge about something else, eh? If that’s how you feel, then look away now.
I have previously vented my anger about how the media shows and represents those of us of a less than perfect state of mental health, culminating at the recent reporting of “the depressed Germanwings pilot”. Then, Katie Hopkins’ grossly offensive attack on us and today the Mayor of London Boris Johnson gets in on the act.
Let’s get the Boris Johnson phenomenon into perspective. There have been many myths created about Johnson, not least that he is the voice of everyman and speaks his mind where other politicians speak the party line. And we all love his eccentricity. Good old Boris! Except that it isn’t “Good Old Boris”. As the people of London well know, it’s all an act.
Today, in the Daily Mail (who knew?) Johnson is wheeled out to attack Ed Miliband, on the grounds that London’s mayor is hugely loved by the public, so his opinions will resonate with the undecided voter. Saying that Miliband will take us back to the 1970s, Johnson declares that the Labour leader is deranged. Now Miliband is many things, but this is the first time I have seen him described as deranged, which actually means insane. If Johnson is using the word deranged as a metaphor – and I can’t see how he is – then that doesn’t make it better.
I urge every single person in our country to register and vote since millions of brave Britons lost their lives in order to preserve our democracy, or at least what remains of it, but this kind of politics explains why people hate it so much. But it isn’t just the politicians themselves who demean politics: it’s the media which reports it. When people say, “I’m not interested in politics” I am in no position to persuade them otherwise. Grown men and women, shouting at each other, fiddling their expenses and making promises in opposition that they break as soon as they enter that ministerial office. Not good examples.
Johnson knows exactly what he is doing. This was no throwaway line from a bumbling buffoon, the well known Boris Johnson act. This is a politician, every bit as calculating and cynical as George Osborne, trying to secure an electoral advantage by declaring the leader of the opposition as insane. Miliband ignores the abuse, abuse that he always knew would come his way when he decided to abandon the Blairite way of appeasement to the media barons. Put simply, if you stand up to the bullies, in this case Murdoch, Rothermere, Dacre, the Barclay brothers and others, this is what you get. If you disagree with us, you are insane, deranged and so not fit for office.
For the life of me, I do not understand why people soothe the egos and boost the profits of the rich and powerful who control our media by buying their tawdry newspapers. To say that you disagree with Miliband’s plans to save the NHS, improve our schools, preserve our vital frontline services and protect the weakest in society, then by all means do so. Let’s have a grown up debate about it. Declaring someone to be insane for holding a view is not very grown up to me.
