We The Undersigned...

Is there anything more smug and off putting than group letters of the self appointed great and good to a newspaper? Take the letter criticising the Prime Minister's declaration that Britain is a Christian country, regardless of the merits of his claim is there any way that a letter signed by Polly Toynbee, Antony Grayling, Nick Ross and CJ from Eggheads* can have any effect other than boosting the PM's cause?

What is the mindset of people who sign these letters? Presumably someone like Tim Minchin has thought to himself that because he can make amusing comic routines about religion and blow up dolls, that adding his signature to a letter will somehow add weight and merit to the cause he believes in. It doesn't, it just makes him look pompous and egotistical and would do regardless of the merit of the argument being put forward. The same applies to the rest of the figures who signed the letter.


* On the subject of CJ De Mooi from Eggheads, judging by the wikipedia entry on him, he is every bit as smug as he appears on television:

He adopted the name de Mooi when modelling; he translates it as Dutch for "handsome man", though a more literal translation would be "the beautiful".

Bell end.

Majority Of Parents Want More Expensive Off-Peak Holidays.

I thought we'd heard the last of this story a few weeks ago but it turns out that some people are still very angry that holiday companies charge less when demand is lower. The actual outrage is over charging more during the school holidays when demand is sky high, but it amounts to the same thing:

Majority of parents back holiday price caps - new ITV poll

 

More than half of parents say inflated holiday prices should be capped so they are not forced to take their children out of school for cheaper getaways, a new survey for ITV reveals.

 

...

 

More than half of parents surveyed (53 per cent) believed travel companies should be forced to cap their holiday prices.

 

 Presumably the hotels and airline operators will charge the holiday companies less during peak demand too. This does demonstrate why political debates over the economy are so inane- even the most basic economic concept, the kind which are learned in the very first lesson of an economics course, are considered to be akin to magic by a large proportion of the population.