Rockita Barbellovich

It’s time we saw through the instant impression to the better side of our species

I think there’s been far too much opprobrium poured onto the rioting looters. They’re young, right? It’s just a phase they’re going through. After six months thinking things through in one of our exemplary jails, they’ll emerge as model citizens. Ten years from now there’ll be profiles of such folks in Sunday magazines, under the headline ‘How a former Shoebox looter created a global sandals business’.

That Harriet Harman too: she doesn’t really mean what she says about men being crap, and needing strict quotas of women helping them to drive more safely. She’s just, you know, shooting for the Moon in the hope of getting a level playing field for the Sisters. Personally I feel a good start to the Met Police shake-up would be a female Top Cop. I mean, look at Sue Akers. She’s doing what men should’ve done years ago. If we’d had an all-black-Mum Force dealing with the looters last week, it would have been over within an hour. Lots of bashing with frying pans, and terrifying shouts of “Delbert, what you doin’ is you been brought up behavin like this? Go gettin’ yo black bottom back inside de house this minute”. In fact, all up I think we should make Hattie Harpoon Minister for West Indians: young black blokes need a firm hand, and the women are unquestionably downtrodden. I need a rest from being designated a grumpy old white misogynist.

Most of the people we demonise – they’re not all bad. The currency traders and credit managers in the EU are quite nice when you get to know them. Sometimes, they think about more than this year’s bonus. Next year’s bonus, for example. They don’t really want the EU to collapse. That way, they won’t get a bonus this year or next. This is called enlightened self-interest: what they want – and it’s not asking for much, really – is some reassurance. You know, evidence that Herman Van Rompuy’s ability to implode Belgium isn’t indicative of his competence in other things. A hint that Christine Lagarde wasn’t working on her tan when she should have been cutting French budgets.

It’s the same with senior Newscorp personnel. When James Murdoch goes back before the CM&S committee, you’ll see: he’ll go, “Oh, that email? You mean, an email? Only, when you said ’email about how we were hacking the crap out of everyone from the Monarch downwards’, I misheard and then misspoke. I thought you said ‘text about how we were paying Andy Hayman for security services phone numbers’, and even I didn’t know we were doing that sort of sh*t, so I denied it. Any more questions?”  Tom Watson needs to try thinking the best of people: he manages it perfectly well with a self-obsessed dork like Louise Mensch, so why can’t he give poor, doddery Rupert an even break? Let’s try and remember all the good he’s brought to our Sceptred Isle: hamster headlines, a Times accessible to ESNs, support for Mrs Thatcher, forcing Blair to fly round the world, the Hitler Diaries, hacking Heather Mills, Andy Gray….the list is endless. Look hard enough, and you’ll always see the true person shining through.

Vladimir Putin is another example. Just because he’s decisive and keeps taking his shirt off, people have doubts about him.  But he’s only trying to reach out to the Gay vote, and why not? He must be OK, because he’s modelling his Eurasian Union on the EU: he insists that people join in, and if they don’t want to, he joins them in anyway by cutting off the oil supply. Just give some thought to how much oil that’s saved over time. Give the man some credit.

Barack Obama is a nice chap on the whole, he just didn’t actually do what he said he would in 2008. Which is fine really, because he didn’t say anything of substance at all during the election of 2008: nothing promised = nothing achieved. It works for me. “Yes we can!” he said 14,920 times, and he was right: yes, the US could burst through the debt ceiling, kill a deadbeat washed-up terrorist, give away major helicopter secrets in the process, and throw £2.2 trillion on a bondfire. Nobody ever did any of those things before. Cut the guy some slack.

Angela Merkel isn’t really an ugly power-freak, and nor is Nicolas Sarkozy a vulgar shortarse. There’s a lot more to David Cameron than knee-jerk soundbites and an eclectic sense of direction. George Osborne may look like a squeaky toy you want to put back in the nursery cupboard, but don’t get up his nose, otherwise you’ll see a whole other type of beast. All of these people may have hidden extras where they should have depths, but extras can come in very handy in tough times: people who’ll go the extra mile, for instance. Take William Hague – he’s an extra-terrestrial – and we need some extra ideas, even from another planet. If only to keep the ones we’ve already got company.

It’s so much more positive to start the day like this: to add up all the things we’ve got going for us as a species, and stop talking humanity down. We’re not responsible for any of the mess on planet Earth – not climate change, ozone holes, partitioned countries, rutting like chimpanzees, religion, melting ice-caps or global insolvency. A big boy called God created all these things, and ran away.

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