I think they probably need to grow up a bit, I mean, you know the problem with kids that age is that their frontal lobes haven't formed properly and they're not really capable of behaving rationally like grown-ups.
He continued, in the same plain-speaking, no-nonsense vein :
This has nothing to do with bankers. This has to do with the very simple fact that the country is £4.8 trillion in debt ... we cannot afford to subsidise wasters to spend three years doing windsurfing, dubstep and X-Factor studies...
Interesting, forthright opinions. I was sure I'd come across this straight-talking scourge of useless wasters somewhere before. It took me a little while to remember exactly where I'd previously encountered Mr Delingpole and his performing opinions, then I remembered that he'd been on the telly a long while back. There was a programme about the upper classes on Channel 4, featuring Deligpole attempting, with various levels of success, to ingratiate himself with a succession of condescending toffs. My memories of the programme are hazy, but the dominant impressions that stayed with me were that:
a) the toffs came across as a bunch of arrogant, self-indulgent wastrels who clearly thought Delingpole their social inferior
and
b) half of the programme seemed to consist of Delingpole gushing to camera about his moonstruck infatuation with this bunch of condescending, pampered nonentities, the other half was a record of his undignified attempts to gain their acceptance, despite the fact that they would no more consider treating him as an equal than they would an over-affectionate spaniel puppy
My own memories of this rather cringe-worthy piece of TV have grown dim, so I'm grateful to Skipper for this lively review, written at the time:
Which left the upper classes and Mr James Dellingpole [sic], allegedly a journalist. He had been to Oxford and admired the upper classes enormously but had failed to break into their closed circle, something which had clearly upset him. Like Evelyn Waugh he seemed to have a huge crush on toffs, the more blue blooded the better. He desperately admired their 'backbone, spunk and honour'. So he forayed forth into a Mayfair party, Channel 4 cameras at his back, and tried to elicit comment from the various aristos who stalked the event like elusive rare fauna. He did manage to corner the odd startled specimen. Earl Spencer and Prince Michael both snubbed him awfully but did it so politely he seemed not too dismayed. His problem was that: he was poorly dressed -more M and S than Saville Row; his voice also signalled clearly he was not of their tribe; and, just maybe,(though this is no more than conjecture as I have no idea of Mr Dellingpole's ethnic provenance) his appearance might have sparked off negative reactions in a notoriously anti-semitic social grouping. In other words, they saw him as an awful oik who was trying to crash their exclusivity. His approach was too crude and transparent. They were bound to see him off the premises. But was he dismayed? Any sensible person would have been and given up at that point. But he wasn't and, luckily for him, things improved a bit after this disastrous start.
He decided to try the Cresta Run in St Moritz where, I was amazed to discover, a closed group of aristos have risked life and limb since the last century. This was where the film became not no much sociology as social anthropology. The toffs wore plus four tweeds to ride their bob sleighs. One explained: 'This form of dress worked OK when we started and so, on that basis, we haven't changed it.' Seems like that statement sums up the attitude of the British aristocracy and provides their epitaph at the same time. James declared he would try the Run, whatever the dire dangers to various parts of his body. Visibly scared, he survived and, generally, was treated with a modicum of respect by the toffs. Next came living in the fast lane. For this he shacked up with Channel 4 favourite, Charlie Brockett of jungle fame. Charlie, a convicted felon of course, proved too nice a guy to be anything other than charming and James was allowed to drive a Ferrari as well as exchange good natured banter with the fraudster peer. But I suspected throughout that James secretly wanted to be stepped on, to be humiliated rather than merely humoured.
But the real object of James's dreams, it seemed, was to ride to hounds. This he arranged to do with the Cotswold Hunt and, with great commitment and assiduity learned how to ride. He eventually issued forth with the 'unspeakable' though never quite made contact with the 'uneatable'. But he survived again and, though condescended to by all he met, was not treated too badly. He concluded his gallop around Burke's peerage with a wistful soliloquy on the wonders of this vanishing breed, regretting the loss of this selfless group of noble spirits, warning that we'd miss them once they had gone.
I have seldom seen such a witless programme on such a key topic. Instead of analysis and insight we got a pathetic prostration of a yearning apparently self- loathing inadequate before a collection of parasitic, selfish, useless people with whom the French revolutionaries better knew how to deal.
Now, Mr Delingpole, what were you saying about pampered wasters? Tearing into students on the radio this morning, he wore the mask of a modern hard-nosed no-nonsense meritocrat, but behind the mask cowers an old-fashioned, socially insecure, class-obsessed snob, straight out of the pages of William Makepeace Thackeray. I think we'll see a lot more like him coming out of the woodwork to applaud the impeccably wealthy and well-bred Mr Cameron's Great Leap Backwards to a golden age before the welfare state, when the lower orders knew their place and the wealthy preached to the "undeserving poor" on the virtues of thrift and industry.
I understand that James Delingpole also gets paid for writing down his opinions in the Telegraph, He has some partiualrly strong opinions on the complicated subject of man-made global warming (he doesn't believe in it). His degree, by the way, was in English Literature, which means he's perfectly entitled to his opinion, but no better qualified to pronounce on the subject than a graduate in wind surfing studies.
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