Peter Wilhelm: All things bad about Britain (and being politically correct)

One of my absolute favourite satirical writers is Ndumiso Ngcobo, who writes a weekly piece for the Sunday Times’ Lifestyle section. He is incredibly witty and unapologetic and tackles current affairs and topics with a uniqueness and flair that is refreshing to read. As I am new to BizNews, I haven’t been exposed to much of Peter Wilhelm’s writing, but I am fast becoming a fan. To be a satirist requires a certain skill, and Ngcobo and Wilhelm are, in my humble opinion, masters. In Peter Wilhelm’s latest piece, he discusses all things that are bad about Britain (the contentious Jeremy Clarkson in particular) and the convoluted concept of freedom of speech. Unapologetic, intelligent, humorous and definitely not politically correct, this is well worth a read.  – Tracey Ruff 

By Peter Wilhelm

Are we about to enter the slave trade? Our sniggering president, Jake Zooma, has been expelling hot, fungible air in a fractious Parliament again. I’m far more intrigued by his previous reiterated suggestion that unmarried teenage moms should have their kids ripped away to state asylums and the girls shipped to be re-educated (as in Soviet Russia).

Prediction: the unfortunate girls will be subject to all kinds of abuse. The “fathers” will gloat. The wrenched-away children will resort to tik.

“It’s part of nation-building,” Zooma’s reported as saying.

To each his own madness. English folk are enraged that Jeremy Clarkson – the most popular BBC asshole – was axed from his testosterone-charged programme Top Gear after physical involvement involving a producer.

I ought to throw in the weasel word “alleged” since (so far as I know) no legal proceedings are afoot.

The programme swiftly followed into limbo, though will rise again with its macho paraphernalia of awesome cars and deadly speed. A replacement will be found for the short-fused Jeremy, possibly the knitting correspondent.

A disclosure seems necessary: I personally find Clarkson an arrogant creep. Hundreds of thousands of viewers think differently – despite the cocky one’s record of previous violence, racial slurs, evident misogyny and approval of radically influential whippet-swift driving.

Take his sinister influence on his sidekick Richard Hammond, who almost died after crashing at 464 km per hour. Hammond crawled back.

However, since I dwell in a peaceful, law-abiding democracy, perhaps I tend to disapprove of loutish Brits – those soccer thugs, paedophiles, drunken page-three dribblers over nude moppets, and universal eccentricity.

Nowhere else in the world do you find loonies who compete with each other to see how many living eels they can stuff down their pants; and who then actually eat jellied eels, haggis, chip butties, tripe, black pudding (solidified pigs’ blood), and spotted dick. That was an eel you saw emerging from David Cameron’s pantaloons, not a spotted dick.

(I know, the Frogs eat snails; we scarf dried dead animal flesh.)

Of course, the ultra-no-no has been deemed to be ethnic epithets.

Clarkson has been caught out using what has come to be called “the n-word”, a euphemism Agatha Christie would have found puzzling when she wrote her bestseller Ten Little N-Words – a title swiftly modified to Ten Little Indians, which I suspect is as offensive to the 1.252-billion inhabitants of the I-nation as the one that gave us such masterpieces as the vampire-head auteur Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained in which the n-word recurs some 109 times.

So then: is freedom of speech (the sine qua non of AWB types, clueless hacks, and assorted fascists) a licence to kill by hatred? Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, bloody violence, the gurgling spews of some “comedians”; all these cause a reflex of repulsion in me – as it should in any society where racial divisions are real and explosive. So there.

Racial abuse has penalties here and in the US, like not paying your taxes or the money back.

To break these cultural offences is asking for trouble. Just look at Ferguson in the US where street people have begun shooting cops. This is where the new mutation of political correctness, punted by those who claim to deplore conventional PC attitudes, gets you.

In the interests of appeasement, I cite the occurrence in Ireland last week of a day when all drugs – including ketamine, magic mushrooms and crystal meth – were legal pending the onrush of new legislation. How like us!

I actually fail to grasp what is or isn’t legal. I often encounter my rotting neighbour’s daughter – call her Sexy Siouxie – while out walking Matilda, my pet Golden Orb spider who has lately taken to leaping on joggers to devour.

Despite this sensible behaviour, I have to rest panting beside the boat-sized arachnid on a fallen tree-trunk to rest as morbidly obese folk trot past “running for life”, poor fools. Why don’t they just try Banting or coitus?

Along came Siouxie — thump, thump, thump. She looked odd. “Siouxie!” I called and she halted, glaring venomously at us. “You look a little … strange.”

“Stuff you,” she noted. “I’m training to join the Stormers. They have too many whites in the team!”

“But they’re all, well, male?”

“I happen to have joined the LGBTI community,” she said and raised her T-shirt to show me a massive mat of fur and lurid tats. “LGBTI? What’s the ‘I’ for?” I queried.

“Intersex. To go with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual. I’m well on my way becoming a male thanks to large infusions of testosterone.”

“Ah!” I ejaculated like Sherlock Holmes. “You need a cock transplant! Leave your vagina to posterity.” Her response: “You sexist bastard! It’s people like you who make me want to leave the country and play for Wales.”

Matilda began to chew his/her toes.