The Pakistan flag (upside down)
As lefties go, you
are were definitely one of the best. Up until now you didn’t play the “racist” card every time someone voiced concern over immigration, you drank with Nigel Farage without condemning him to the bottom layer of hell, you even stood up to the deafening silence over the Cyril Smith child abuse scandal and pushed for more investigation. You were also a fellow enthusiast of education. It pains me to say it, but you really were OK.
Until this last fortnight or so, that is.
First of all you were caught favouring porn on Twitter. In a display of your political prowess you actually managed to at least partially turn that into a win, claiming that you are a man of the world and your wife “loves it” (after all ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is so big right now) and even The Telegraph backed you up. It almost made you appear a man of integrity and honesty. Of course, it would’ve helped if you had not at first denied it and hilariously claimed your iphone was faulty but still, it’s the best Twitter spin I’ve seen since John Denham MP explained to me why he used poor grammar.
And then came the flag incident. You joined in “Pakistan Day” and raised the flag upside down with the rest of the local Cheshire cats. A minor Twitter storm followed. Now on one hand, it’s perfectly reasonable to raise a flag and show “cohesion” within a community. On the other though, Simon, let’s look at the bigger picture and I don’t mean your expenses . You have acknowledged yourself how much concern there is over immigration in the UK and especially your constituency of Rochdale. You have quite rightly promised to consider those fears. That’s all in addition to your local grooming cases that are so disturbing, the politicos work hard to avoid exposure of them. Knowing this, can you at least understand why the British public at large may see this flag incident as a faux pax? Can you fathom the traces of anger and disapproval? We never see the English flag raised by smiling politicians in Pakistan, I personally have never seen you beaming with pride as the English flag is raised. Let’s remember a Labour colleague of yours viewed a display of the English flag with such snideness that she tweeted a photo of it in the belief others would join her in sneering. That’s how out of touch your party is with its working class roots, yet there you stand with a flag of a foreign country.
But in all honesty this still isn’t the rub. That came when someone called Katie Hopkins got a little over-exasperated and sent some silly tweets your way. This is when you choose to play politics again and project the focus onto her. In an astonishing waste of police time you followed the example of Stan Collymore and made a police complaint. How did you justify that waste of tax money? With the one and only word you knew you could use without being laughed at: racism. Yep, you spat on all your talk of “community cohesion” , “understanding concerns” and the other political babble you once believably spouted and played the laziest, most ignorant and exploited card you could.
Only one problem Simon: a guy called Richard Dawkins (you may have heard of him, he’s smarter than you or me) once said: “If you say it’s racist to insult Islam, you are saying Islam is a race. If you say Islam is a race,you are a racist.”
Now just substitute “Pakistan” for “Islam” in that quote and you’ve just been exposed for the hypocrite you are. Pakistan – the nation you profess so much “cohesion” with – is not made up of one “race”, not even close. Yet you committed the sin you accuse the right wing of and made an ignorant, sweeping claim about different ethnic groups that populate one state. By the same token you have implied that a nation is analogous to a single ethnic identity. Care to clarify that, MP Danscyuk? How does it apply to England?
In seeking to defend the indefensible, you put your foot in it with the mother of all “put your foot in it” quotes. You authored an article with the phrase “I’m a strong champion of free speech, BUT…….” followed by a pathetic, cowardly set of excuses for wasting police time. Not your finest moment. You followed it with one last barrel scrape – a tweet lecturing the world about freedom of speech.
For the record, free speech is not an unassailable right. It’s a privilege to be treated with care
— Simon Danczuk (@SimonDanczuk) March 31, 2015
You’re a smart man, you probably knew this was wrong already. It raises the question of why you would do it. Could you, by any chance, have one eye on re-election and another long spell of tax-payer funded hotel visits? I’d love an answer to that question, spin free.
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