We Mustn’t Let the Poor Have Nice Things
Today the Guardian shares the wisdom of millionaire socialist and noted fashion crone Dame Vivienne Westwood:
Clothes and food should cost much more than they do in Britain to reflect their true impact on the environment, Vivienne Westwood said on Wednesday night. Speaking at a Guardian Live event at Chelsea Old Town Hall hosted by columnist Deborah Orr, the controversial fashion designer said: “Clothes should cost a lot more than they do – they are so subsidised. Food should cost more too – you know something is wrong when you can buy a cooked chicken for £2.”
Westwood also declared that capitalism was over.
Ms Westwood, whose PVC handbags can occasionally be found marked down to a mere £400, was noted here previously, in May 2008, when Conservative politician Boris Johnson became London’s mayor. Naturally, the Guardian invited several leftwing Londoners to share their views on this terrifying development. Ms Westwood expressed her indignation in suitably colourful terms:
Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don’t vote for [leftwing rival] Ken [Livingstone].
Our foremost titan of handbag design appeared to have difficulty grasping the concept of democracy, which entails the possibility that other people – perhaps a great many of them – will have preferences that differ from one’s own. Still, there’s an almost charming megalomania to Ms Westwood’s belief that a system which allows people to vote on those preferences must be a “sham” when the people doing the voting disagree with Vivienne Westwood.
The Leftist elite despises the proles. For them, it’s not about alleviating their plight. It’s about making sure they don’t lift themselves up to the point where they have the money and audacity to rent that lovely vacation villa in Tuscany to which the Left repairs every summer.
I want to know where she buys a whole cooked chicken for £2.
Tim Worstall struggles valiantly to follow Ms Westwood’s logic.
Government of the masses by me and my friends for our après-diner conversation.
Thanks for the laughs, David. *hits tip jar*
Cheers, matey.
I want to know where she buys a whole cooked chicken for £2.
At a certain time of the evening, some supermarkets mark down all the unsold items from the rotisserie, presumably just to cut their losses. The lure of four cooked chicken drumsticks for 75p or a cooked Cumberland ring for 40p sometimes makes the back of my nearest Morrisons look like the prelude to Red Cross aid drop in South Sudan at around 7pm.
Presumably, Ms Westwood would much rather this food be just thrown away. There’s probably some enlightened socialist argument for this that a mere brainwashed consumer like myself couldn’t possibly comprehend.
Does anybody else think Vivienne Westwood looks like Miss Havisham from Great Expectations?
Dickens describes her as looking like “the witch of the place.”
she is said to look like a cross between a waxwork and a skeleton, with moving eyes.
What larks, Pip!
Does she want to leave the EU? They’re the ones subsidising food production.
They won’t be happy until we’re living in mud huts eking out a subsistence ‘living’ from the quarter acre granted to us under license from the benevolent Eco-state. Why not instead simply skip this intermediate stage what with its lack of determination and nerve and jump ahead to the gulags and killing fields? Forward!
Viv is lucky. She can always chew her own handbags to survive. Those people working in the concrete industry aren’t so fortunate.
Like all good elites, she believes humanity is the enemy. Except for the mega-rich, of course, who really should be considered a distinct species.
Homo Hypocritae
noted fashion crone
*snork*
Surely such reasonable views will be greeted by a warm round of applause and nods of approval?
[Clicks links, reads comments, steps away quickly to avoid flying spittle, bits of hair, teeth etc.]
Eeeessh. She’ll be wanting some kind of salve after that mauling.
Who would have imagined such opinions would be so unpopular? Must be another sign for Widow Twanky of broken democracy.
Speaking of which, David Byrne is warming to the same theme here.
Speaking of which, David Byrne is warming to the same theme here.
Mr Byrne says he’s “a revolutionary.” I thought he was a past-it pop musician from the late ‘70s and ‘80s. I must update my files.
The vanity of these people.
Byrne, pfft…I’ve got a van that is loaded with weapons, packed up and ready to go. It’s been sitting for 35 years. Doubt I can get it to turn over now.
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Mr Byrne says he’s “a revolutionary.” I thought he was a past-it pop musician from the late ‘70s and ‘80s
Siiiiggghh. David. You of all people should remember that LPs and CDs and DVDs all require revolving to operate. Only with solid state storage and transmission do musicians stop being revolutionary.
I’m not making this up, you know!
From the bounty of CIF…
and our largely disposable and ephemeral clothes are having to (sic) made in Bangladesh and shipped to us.
*smirk*
I’ve never heard someone describe their clothes as ephemeral. Even the cheapest clothes I’ve bought lasted quite a while. Maybe some people shouldn’t dress in flower petals?
Imagine how far one has to have travelled from an orthodox pro-working class position before one starts complaining that food is too cheap. It’s like moaning about Africans having too easy access to clean water.
And clearly one of the unintended consequences of the War Machine that is Capitalism – sucking up everything for itself – is cheap chicken and ephemeral clothes.
I guess War Machines don’t need such things.
Imagine how far one has to have travelled from an orthodox pro-working class position before one starts complaining that food is too cheap.
The modern left – or what we see of it in the Guardian, its national organ – shows surprisingly little interest in the working class. Insofar as the Guardian’s columnists are a yardstick of prevailing fashion, the relationship isn’t so much one of empathy but of scolding and correction.
big warehouse store Costco, very nicely done rotisserie chickens $4.99.
On further thought, Westwood’s position is even more incoherent than at first glance. Let’s say, arguendo that food is the price it is because it is being subsidised, and thus is more affordable for the less well-off. Subsidised by whom? Presumably the better off, out of taxation. So we have the remarkable spectacle of someone nominally of the Left getting exercised at the prospect of a wealth transfer from rich to poor so that the latter can more easily afford the staples of life. I suppose leaving the proles with more money in their pockets runs the risk they might spend it on something déclassé.
Imagine how far one has to have travelled from an orthodox pro-working class position before one starts complaining that food is too cheap.
Very short trip as the elites love their pets as long as said pets know their place.
Left getting exercised at the prospect of a wealth transfer from rich to poor so that the latter can more easily afford the staples of life.
No, transfers of wealth are only from the undeserving richn& middle class. People like Al Gore and George Soros need to keep their wealth because they hold the Correct.Views and do so much sacrificing in trying to nudge (or bludgeon) people into adopting nothing but the Correct.Views.
And transfers should never be so much that one cannot, at a glance, distinguish between the poor and the Better People.
The poor shall each their Soylent Green and like it.
So we have the remarkable spectacle of someone nominally of the Left getting exercised at the prospect of a wealth transfer from rich to poor
You’re thinking about this too deeply. The elite left only looks as far as to the point where the word “corporation” jumps up. They know that the “corporation” is subsidized either directly or indirectly via the (ostensibly) poor customer due to a food-stamp style program. Since the “corporation” is receiving money, the production of said chicken therefore is bad. Where the money comes from is irrelevant to them.
I guess War Machines don’t need such things.
Hmmm. That may depend on which War Machine origin story or circumstance you’re thinking of, given that Marvel does keep tinkering with the details . . .
I have never laughed so hard at LP etc as from your posts, David! Tip jar hit. 🙂
The vanity of these people.
I’m reminded of this commercial (SFW) from the US in the late 1980s.
Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t, in fact, some devilishly clever false-flag operation to discredit the Left; secret agents getting to live the millionaire lifestyle so long as they loudly claim that, to them, socialism means that the material basics of life would cost far more. Are we sure she’s not actually being backed by a clandestine psy-ops splinter group of the Mount Pelerin Society?
Insofar as the Guardian’s columnists are a yardstick of prevailing fashion, the relationship isn’t so much one of empathy but of scolding and correction.
Why feel empathy with the proles when you can feel superior instead?
Why feel empathy with the proles when you can feel superior instead?
As Martin Durkin noted in his film about Thatcher, the membership of the Labour Party, its centre of gravity, has shifted significantly from the traditional working class to middle-class public sector employees – which is to say, Guardian readers. And as we’ve seen many times, the leftist commentariat is often comically unmoored from the concerns of the average working Joe. Such that self-styled ‘progressives’ openly sneer at the “ugliness” of working class barbecues, with their “oppressively penetrating” gender roles and “low-quality sausage meat.”
And so the relationship, insofar as it exists, often seems more like that of an exasperated parent and an obstinate child, or a farmer and his livestock. Apparently the proletariat is something that has to be fixed, coerced and mentally realigned – a term actually used by Caroline Lucas – before it can be liberated from the evils of consumerism, capitalism and heteronormativity.
I prefer to see the relationship as one of parasite and host. And the lefist ‘elite’ are definitely not the host.
And as we’ve seen many times, the leftist commentariat is often comically unmoored from the concerns of the average working Joe.
Heh.
Did anyone hear about the superhero pyjamas earlier this year? This was a set of pyjamas for very young children, a pink one with “I only date heroes” on, and a blue-grey one with “Future man of steel”.
Naturally, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain quarters.
The virtuous anger was – rather predictably – sparked via the Twitter account of a New Media Studies Professor, Aimée Morrison.
What amused me about the story was that all the people who re-Tweeted the message in order to express their virtuous anger seemed blissfully unaware that what they were doing was basically criticizing the tastes and mores of people unlike themselves.
Reading their comments felt like an episode from “Real Housewives of Holland Park” sneering at the clothing choices of the less well-off.
Everyone is entitled to have an opinion of course, but still it was quite surprising to see such elitist snobbery on the shortcomings of working class taste bandied about so freely by the Academic Left.
“Food should cost more too – you know something is wrong when you can buy a cooked chicken for £2”.
Perish the thought that the low-paid should be able to feed themselves.
What a cunt Westwood is.