There seems to be a lot of angry people about right now. The problem, as I see it, is a lot of them seem to be getting angry about the wrong things. There is plenty of really bad stuff going down right now, all of which seems to get ignored amongst populist rantings.

This week, we have seen people getting irrationally angry about a word in a Pogues song from 1987, what Marcus Rashford chooses to spend his wages on (property, the bastard!) and public sector workers pay rises. Why is that?

The Pogues

How can the removal of the word ‘faggot’ in a song make someone irrationally angry whilst a non-working Test & Trace system (costing £12 million) doesn’t bother them? How can anyone be fuming with someone who raises child poverty awareness but not a government handing out PPE contracts to their mates?

It’s a conundrum I have never really got my head around if I am honest. Personally, I can’t see the point in the BBC making themselves a target of frothing populist attention seekers by changing a word in a song. But it really isn’t a big issue in a world of pandemics and corruption, is it?

The thought of someone screaming at their car radio because Radio One removed a word from a Christmas song, is beyond my comprehension. Most of those angry types listen to Radio 2 anyway, so in fairness to the BBC, they played the situation well by not changing the lyrics for that station. It doesn’t stop Laurence Fox screaming that the BBC should be defunded though; cretin that he is.

Freedom of Speech

These types who scream about freedom of choice and not being allowed to have an opinion anymore, never cease to amaze me. They are quite happy to advocate death threats to a footballer who chooses not to wear a poppy for personal geopolitical reasons. Is the freedom to say what you want, exclusive to populists?

It is almost like one of the contracts that the government hand out to their mates, is to the newspaper groups who can weed out stories for people to get angry about. Part of the contract is to punch down on anyone except the government. Sportsmen of non-hereditary wealth are an easy target as are the removal of things that may no longer seem appropriate.

During crushing austerity, unemployment and the battering of frontline services such as the police and the NHS, people still found time to go bat shit crazy over a golliwog on jam jars and a footballer from Derry not wearing a poppy. Madder still, it’s often the same people who have done alright for themselves who are going mental over nothing. Why are they so angry about poor people with flat screen TV’s and single mother’s who can afford a packet of ten ciggies?

Anyone would think that someone in government, like Michael Gove for instance, had a wife working for one of these populist newspapers. You know, someone influencing incendiary articles to deflect attention from big corruption issues within government, perhaps?

Surely not?