The British mediocracy is suffused with mediocrity. It’s not hard to work out why

Berlusconi has backed down, Italy is saved! Um, noooo. The state sector deficit increased from €11.4bn in September 2012 to €15.5bn in September 2013. The cumulative deficit in the first nine months was €75.5 billion, somewhat in excess of the 3% target. So then, EC nominee Letta (“Lettas ‘ave a United States Europe innit”) is not cutting the Modena re this one. In fact as far as one can see, apart from gdp, he’s not cutting anything. The Brussels-am-Berlin ClubMed success story just goes on and on.

The BBC informs us that a study has shown exercise can be as good a medicine as pills for people with conditions such as heart disease. Clearly the BBC site’s assumption these days is that most of its readers have conditions such as brain disease. It’s lead story this morning also explained that President Obama has warned there is a danger of the US being in technical default, and for the bigger children there’s an ‘analysis’ by Mark Madell which says the problem consists of two sides who won’t blink. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the dumbest of them all?

The FT is begging me to return to their subscribers’ internment camp. Today they’re tempting me with ‘Party conferences signal gear shift’, ‘Berlusconi stuns all by backing Letta’, ‘Draghi pledges to keep interest rates low’, and ‘Mounting Wall Street fears of US default’. I wonder if the Beeb has ever thought of merging with the FT? It would create a media conglomerate which could then compete with Newscorp on a level playing field of bland bromides.

How odd, then, to find (as one often does I’m afraid) that the Dacre Mail gets to the nub of major issues with rather more penetration than either of the above media jokes. The Wail earned the applause of a judge yesterday for pushing the case of Wanda Maddocks, who was jailed for five months by a Secret Court.

Her crime was trying to take her dementia-suffering father John out of a State care home where (she felt) his life was in danger. The Court had been alerted to this dangerous woman by those nice turf-warring social workers I’ve written about so fondly over the years. Our under-occupied constabulary arrived at the care home in a daring mob-handed raid, and dragged her off for a dose of porridge. That probably made the day’s haul two homophobes, a hate criminal, a sexist employer and four children suspected of not wearing a crash helmet in the playground.

And finally, right-on Guardian hackette Bronwen Clune (a liberal South African, no less) informs us that she doesn’t like grammar Nazis. Her argument runs thus:

‘Every week, thousands of self-proclaimed grammar nazis/police/snobs take great pride in correcting the “there’s” and “theirs” of friends and followers. The more I see it happening, the less comfortable I’m becoming with the underlying mindset that seems to be driving it. At its essence it is old-fashioned classism and elitism…’

Liberal mindset: if you can tell correct from incorrect, you’re an elitist snob. But just in case you’re still puzzling as to Ms Clune’s relativist outlook on life, there’s more:

‘What I’m arguing against is grammatical elitism which functions to socially exclude others based on class, education or luck, whether people are aware of it or not. And as long as we exclude people, things will remain as they are.’

Oh dear. The same old Seventies bollocks about poor education being the result of social exclusion….and (given her background) no doubt institutional racism as well. Well Bronwen chuck, until the Labour Party abolished Grammar schools, there was zilch, no, zero social exclusion. But there were high standards. Then Guardian-reading teachers full of daft, anarchic ideas about teaching methods and educational ‘equality” peopled the Comprehensive system, and gave every semi-literate English student a top grade in GCSE….an exam invented because nobody could pass the GCEs any more.

So it is that we get pathetic analysis and the blinding obvious from the products of this Grammar-Nazi free education regime currently working in Britain’s media.

Never, ever ask a liberal to join up the dots. It just ain’t gonna happen. Sorry, isn’t going to happen.