It’s been a while since we’ve had an addition to our series of classic sentences, so let’s fix that right now.

Ken Loach is the least egotistical of cinema directors.

Yes, today’s Guardian editorial - In Praise of Ken Loach – would have us believe that an ossified Trotskyist who regards the rise of anti-Semitism as “perfectly understandable” is the yardstick of humility and self-effacement. He’s also, we’re told, a moral visionary: 

“Another world is possible,” Mr Loach told the Cannes audience this week. Not everyone will always agree with Mr Loach’s own politics, but the possibility of a better world is integral to the morality of art, nowhere more so than with Ken Loach. 

Being a devout socialist, a one-time Respect party candidate and a hagiographer of Irish republican terrorism, Mr Loach’s moral credentials are somewhat peculiar. Loach has said that he wants to make the British “confront their imperialist past” and in 1977 he famously rejected the offer of an OBE, supposedly on principle, denouncing the honour as “despicable… deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.” However, as Prodicus noted over at Orphans of Liberty, this principled adamance did not inhibit the director’s 2003 acceptance of the Praemium Imperiale – the World Culture Prize in Memory of His Imperial Highness Prince Takamatsu. His Imperial Highness was of course the brother of the 124th emperor of Japan, Hirohito, whose activities and ambitions were, it seems, altogether more moral and glorious. 

The flavour of Ken’s complicated moral calculus was captured earlier this year over at House of Dumb:  

Nothing sums up the demented nature of the modern left better than a soi-disant socialist party that supports taxing janitors in Leeds to give money to millionaire luvvies in London, so they can make films about how folk in Yorkshire are ignorant bigots. 

Mr Loach had been holding forth on the publicly funded BBC, as he often does, grumbling about “Tories” and once again taking umbrage with multiplex cinemas and the “very narrow” range of films they find viable to screen. The proposed solution to Ken’s problem was, inevitably, greater public funding of independent filmmakers – much like Mr Loach, in fact – and the public funding of a chain of independent cinemas in which these publicly funded films could then be screened, having been selected by publicly funded people much like Mr Loach. This, he said, would “fulfil the possibility that cinema has.” Writing in the Guardian in October 2010, Loach suggested that cinemas should be owned collectively, i.e., by the state, and “programmed by people who care about films – the London Film Festival, for example, is full of people who care about films.” The term “people who care about films” is used frequently by Loach yet is never quite defined, though one doesn’t have to reach far to find the implication. Clearly, he isn’t talking about thee or me, no matter how many times we may excitedly visit a cinema. Bums on seats are not his bottom line. No, our tastes must be guided and elevated, until they conform to the expectations of our professional aesthetes and socialist betters. See? No ego at all. 

And so, what cinemas show should be determined by people who care, as determined by Ken Loach. Such caring, enlightened people might even be inclined to show films made by Ken Loach, and by the friends of Ken Loach, regardless of whether those screenings would find an audience or be economically viable. (If you already have the punters’ money via coercive public subsidy, why fret about ticket sales and those ghastly popular appetites? He’s above such base urges. He’s a socialist, remember?) Central to Ken’s appeal for further subsidy and unearned influence is a belief that the size of the market for art-house / foreign language films, around 2% of total UK ticket sales, is not in fact a reflection of the public appetite for such things, but rather evidence that art-house / foreign language films are in some way being suppressed, presumably on account of their terribly radical content. And this must not stand: 

Those of us who work in television and film have a role to be critical, to be challenging, to be rude, to be disturbing, not to be part of the establishment. We need to keep our independence. We need to be mischievous. We need to be challenging. We shouldn’t take no for an answer.  

However, they will take our money – and not through voluntary ticket sales, as is generally the custom, but with the force of government and taxation. That being what independent, challenging, anti-establishment types do.

Another classic sentence from the you-know-what, care of concerned reporter Peter Walker:

Health experts blame passive overeating for global pandemic, warning in the Lancet that governments must tackle obesity now. 

One more time.

Health experts blame passive overeating…

Much as I hate to question the wisdom of “health experts,” let alone the even greater wisdom of Guardian contributors, I am tempted to ask how exactly passive overeating works. Is it, as the term implies, like passive smoking? Is such a thing physically possible? Mr Walker seems to believe so, as does Lancet contributor Professor Boyd Swinburn:

Swinburn’s paper comes up with a clear primary culprit: a powerful global food industry “which is producing more processed, affordable, and effectively-marketed food than ever before.”

Yes, those utter bastards are making available cheap and tasty food. And – and – you can actually go out and buy it. Will the madness never end?

He said an “increased supply of cheap, palatable, energy-dense foods,” coupled with better distribution and marketing, had led to “passive overconsumption.”

Again, the mind reels at the implied physics of it. Passivity alone has yet to make that extra slice of blackberry cheesecake merge with my good self. So far as I’m aware, tasty cheesecake molecules can’t be absorbed by osmosis or accidental inhalation in sufficient concentrations to add to my mass. Maybe it’s based on some kind of quantum spooky action – someone in Derbyshire scarfs a doughnut and – somehow, miraculously – my cells metabolise it.

Nevertheless – clearly – something must be done:

The journal begins with a strongly-worded editorial arguing that voluntary food industry codes are ineffective and ministers must intervene more directly.

In case there’s any doubt as to what direct intervention means, Professor Swinburn has already made his ambitions clear:  

“They [the government] have to look to how other epidemics, like road injuries and tobacco, have been handled and almost always it has been through taxes and regulation.”

According to our crusading professor, the issue of obesity should not be left to the individual, who is at best a victim and simply can’t be trusted. Family attractions should be “junk food-free zones” and the advertising of such food is, he says, “unethical.” Foodstuffs of which the professor disapproves should be taxed heavily. Making food more expensive is, we’re told, “a benefit.” Provided, that is, raising the cost of popular foods “does not cause disadvantage to poorer people.”

Yes, of course. Consumers must once again be saved from themselves.

Update, via the comments:

One for our collection, care of Zoe Williams:

I think she [Margaret Thatcher] almost certainly didn’t say it (the bus thing). It’s just ambiently true, because she seems like a person who hates buses.

The alleged comment in question – “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus, can count himself a failure” – is difficult to verify and somewhat implausible but is nonetheless repeated by Thatcher’s critics, including the BBC. Its repetition seems to exist independently of a reliable source, possibly because so many would like to believe that it’s true. What’s interesting, though, is the notion that this claim, and by extension any number of others, is ambiently true. Which is to say, it’s assumed as somehow typical – accurate or not – and fits a chosen narrative. Presuming the particulars of what so-and-so might as well have said (or done) – whether or not they did – is ripe with potential. It’s therefore no great surprise that others have taken this strategy much further – to its predictable conclusion.

As when Johnathan Perkins, a black law student, told the University of Virginia’s student newspaper that while walking home he’d been taunted and intimidated by two white police officers. Perkins’ letter claimed that “most Americans are raised in racially sterilised environments,” and that “black people are accused of… playing the victim.” The student’s stated hope was that, “sharing this experience will provide this community with some much needed awareness of the lives that many of their black classmates are forced to lead.” A subsequent investigation, involving dispatch records, police tapes and surveillance video from nearby businesses, revealed the student’s story to be entirely fabricated. In a written statement, Perkins admitted, “I wrote the article to bring attention to the topic of police misconduct… The events in the article did not occur.”

As Mark Bauerlein noted recently, Perkins’ dishonesty was oddly free of consequences, for him at least, and not without precedent. Previously, a 19-year-old freshman ransacked her own room and scrawled racial slurs across its walls before curling into a foetal ball, supposedly in shock. When this “hate crime” was revealed as a hoax, Otis Smith, a regional president of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, was remarkably untroubled. That the events had been staged and then lied about was, he said, “largely irrelevant.” He added, “It doesn’t matter to me whether she did it or not because of all the pressure these black students are under at these predominantly white schools. If this will highlight it, if it will bring it to the attention of the public, I have no problem with that.”

Similar instances of students fabricating “hate crimes,” rape and “hate speech” aren’t exactly hard to find. Maybe what we’re seeing is, at least in part, a kind of activism, albeit one with an unhinged postmodern twist. Perhaps Mr Perkins and his fellow dissemblers believe themselves to be righteous in illustrating some greater truth – an, as it were, ambient one – in the service of which lies can be told, proudly, repeatedly and in good conscience.

Readers may recall Priyamvada Gopal and her efforts to redefine violence so as to include anything to which she and her peers take political exception, thereby elevating actual thuggery to the status of retaliation. For Ms Gopal, setting fire to occupied buildings isn’t “real” violence and is no more objectionable than “hypocritical language.” This bold and convenient philosophy appears to have been embraced by other Guardian contributors – among them, chronic confabulator Laurie Penny, whose recent pronouncements on Twitter included the following (now deleted):

I have no problem with principled, thought-through political ‘violence.’

Note Ms Penny’s daring use of the inverted comma.

Smashing windows is property damage. That’s not the same thing as violence.

The term criminal damage is harder to diminish and smashing windows with bricks in a non-violent manner is not an easy thing to do on the streets of central London. Needless to say, it takes a fair amount of effort to heave larger, heavier objects through someone else’s windows. Just as it takes a certain disposition not to care particularly about where, or on whom, those objects may land along with shards of flying glass. And perhaps we should assume that Laurie has no objection to her belongings being destroyed by those who disagree with her, provided they feel sufficiently righteous and entitled.

Elsewhere, Leah Borromeo pursues a similar theme in a piece titled Protesters Can’t Disown the ‘Violent Minority’. She tells us, apparently in all seriousness,

There are no “good” protesters and no “bad” protesters. The state sees anyone who publicly declares their dissent to its laws and policies as one thing – a threat. When a state is threatened, it sends its henchmen out to quell it.

Yes, I know. Henchmen. All things considered, there’s a distinct whiff of projection. Another contender, I think, for our series of classic sentences.

The henchmen are the police. And you – student or teacher, patient or nurse – are that threat.

No doubt the state’s “henchmen” will be raiding the offices of the Guardian as I type and Polly Toynbee will soon be hauled away, hooded and in chains.

You can’t balance the violence of the oppressor with the violence of the oppressed.

Sadly, Ms Borromeo doesn’t pause to explain exactly how she and her peers are being violently oppressed. Perhaps she’s referring to the government’s modest reduction in the growth of public spending. We do, though, get plenty of self-flattering assertion:

To try to make distinctions between a “peaceful” and a “violent” protester is inherently flawed. Dissent is a violent reaction. Saying “no” is resistance… So – many apologies to those who wish to distance themselves from the “violent minority.” But we’re in this together. You may not like having to share a boat, but it’s a lot better than drowning.

Those who attended Saturday’s protest untroubled by violent urges, possibly with children in tow, may take exception to this casual flattening of distinctions. But people who managed to walk through central London without smashing windows, trashing cash machines or hurling projectiles at the police are, according to Ms Borromeo, no better than those who did.

Time for another classic sentence, care of Dea Birkett, who tells us, quite emphatically:

This is cultural apartheid.

And,

In another place, when one section of society was condemned to a different, less attractive, unseen entrance it was called apartheid.

What, you ask, has caused Ms Birkett’s lava stream of umbrage?

We used to be able to enter by the same door as every other visitor. But when work on the Tate’s £215m extension began last year, overnight all the disabled parking bays were removed. Instead, disabled visitors and their families can park at the rear and use the staff entrance.

Ah. A temporary inconvenience due to building work at Tate Modern. Which, I think you’ll agree, is just like the townships of 1970s South Africa. A quick call to the gallery reveals what Ms Birkett takes care not to disclose. On completion of the work, Tate Modern will be able to offer its disabled patrons enhanced parking facilities – double those available prior to building work – and swifter, more convenient access to the galleries. During the upgrade, provision is hardly threadbare. However, as regular readers will know, victimhood is a competitive business in the pages of the Guardian and wild overstatement is an art form in itself.

Update, via the comments:

Readers may wonder whether Ms Birkett is being sincere, albeit delusional, or just indulging in theatre and hoping no-one notices. She has, however, managed to avoid addressing any factual corrections from her readers and has instead turned on them, saying: “As so often is the case, it’s shocking to see such hatred against people with disabilities.” Despite being asked, repeatedly, to point to examples of this alleged “hatred” – none of which I could find – Ms Birkett has chosen not to oblige. Such is her righteousness.

I can’t help thinking the article tells us more about the author than any hardship she experiences while perusing art, let alone “cultural apartheid.” For instance, Ms Birkett tells us, “Building work is not an excuse to remove access – and that is what happened.” But as the gallery points out and as many of her readers have noted, that’s simply not true. Wheelchair access is temporarily less convenient, and when the building work is done it will be much more convenient than it previously has been. Shocking as it may sound, the Tate isn’t trying to discourage or belittle its disabled customers, whose needs are catered to rather admirably.

Casually contradicting herself, Ms Birkett adds, “Access isn’t only about getting in a building, it’s about feeling welcome. If you’re sent to the back door, you don’t feel welcome.”

Yes, it’s Bethlehem all over again.