Labour MP Emily Thornberry apologises for white Transit van and England flags tweet
A little background is needed here: In England, "White van man" is a contemptuous term for a delivery driver, who is seen as representative of the working class. Class hatreds are ferocious in England but are usually denied. The other thing you need to know is that the St George flag has become a common emblem for English patriotism and opposition to immigration. And the party (UKIP) that was expected to win (and did win) the by-election is an anti-immigration party, so the picture in effect said: "Only the despised working class vote for UKIP". And for a Labour Party MP to show contempt for the workers is fatal. In only a matter of hours she had to resign from her front-bench job. She is a former barrister (Trial Lawyer), who sent her children to private schools -- so it is highly probable that her tweet did indeed reflect snobbish views
A Labour front bench MP has apologised after she tweeted a photo of a house in Rochester adorned with three England flags, which saw her accused of holding working class voters in “contempt”.
Emily Thornberry, Labour shadow attorney general and MP for Islington South and Finsbury in north London, was on the campaign train in Rochester today.
At around 3pm, she tweeted a photo of a two-storey house with a white Transit van parked outside and three St George flags hanging from its window, alongside the caption “image from #Rochester”.
Thornberry, who lives in a £3million home in London, later told The Telegraph she posted the photo because she thought it was "remarkable" as she had never seen a house "completely covered in flags before".
Users of the social media website were quick to point out that the image may have been ill-judged, and made her appear out-of-touch with voters at a time when Labour is attempting to battle against Ukip in the town. Others defended the MP, and said her post may have been misconstrued
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“It says ‘Golgafrincham Ark Fleet, Ship B, Hold Seven, Telephone Sanitizer Second Class’— and a serial number.”
“A telephone sanitizer?” said Arthur. “A dead telephone sanitizer?”
“Best kind.”
“But what’s he doing here?”
Ford peered through the top at the figure within.
“Not a lot,” he said, and suddenly flashed one of those grins of his which always made people think he’d been overdoing things recently and should try to get some rest.
He scampered over to another sarcophagus. A moment’s brisk towel work and he announced:
“This one’s a dead hairdresser. Hoopy!”
The next sarcophagus revealed itself to be the last resting place of an advertising account executive; the one after that contained a secondhand car salesman, third class.
…
“You mean you’ve got a hold full of frozen hairdressers?” he said.
“Oh yes ,” said the Captain. “Millions of them. Hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, public relations executives, management consultants, you name it. We’re going to colonize another planet.”
Ford wobbled very slightly.
“Exciting, isn’t it?” said the Captain.
“What, with that lot?” said Arthur.
“Ah, now don’t misunderstand me,” said the Captain. “We’re just one of the ships in the Ark Fleet. We’re the ‘B’ Ark, you see. Sorry, could I just ask you to run a bit more hot water for me?”
…
“Well, what happened you see was,” said the Captain, “our planet , the world from which we have come, was, so to speak, doomed.”
“Doomed?
“Oh yes. So what everyone thought was, let’s pack the whole population into some giant spaceships and go and settle on another planet.”
…
“Yes, so anyway,” he resumed , “the idea was that into the first ship, the ‘A’ ship, would go all the brilliant leaders, the scientists, the great artists, you know, all the achievers; and then into the third, or ‘C’ ship, would go all the people who did the actual work, who made things and did things; and then into the ‘B’ ship— that’s us— would go everyone else, the middlemen, you see.”
He smiled happily at them.
“And we were sent off first,” he concluded, and hummed a little bathing tune.
…
“And they made sure they sent you lot off first, did they?” inquired Arthur.
“Oh yes ,” said the Captain, “well, everyone said, very nicely I thought, that it was very important for morale to feel that they would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a good haircut and where the phones were clean.”
“Oh yes,” agreed Ford, “I can see that would be very important. And the other ships, er … they followed on after you, did they?”
For a moment the Captain did not answer. He twisted round in his bath and gazed backward over the huge bulk of the ship toward the bright galactic center. He squinted into the inconceivable distance.
“Ah, Well , it’s funny you should say that,” he said and allowed himself a slight frown at Ford Prefect, “because curiously enough we haven’t heard a peep out of them since we left five years ago …. But they must be behind us somewhere.”
…
All this lay in the planet’s remote past. It was, however, a descendant of one of these eccentric poets who invented the spurious tales of impending doom which enabled the people of Golgafrincham to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population. The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
— Adams, Douglas. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book 2). Random House Publishing Group.
The thing I find most fascinating about the left is how hard they work to turn satire into reality.
England's big mistake was allowing illegal aliens to stay
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