Thursday, March 11, 2004

What's Really Wrong With TINOs

TINO is showing his deficiencies again. True, the sneering is there, with a hint of libel but…isn't a rebuttal supposed to, as it were, rebut the original point ? The one-sentence attempt is certainly snippy but it has the distinct disadvantage of being content-free. Then again, TINOs are, by definition, not actually into actual arguments, coherency, or workable philosophies.

There's a story about a famous poet who was approached by an earnest young man who told him 'I want to be a poet', to which the great man replied "I can well understand you wanting to write poetry, but I don't know what you mean by 'being a poet' ". That is exactly the thing with the TINO brigade. Individuals such as Francis Maude, Michael Heseltine and John Bercow spend so long slagging off mainstream Conservatism, to say nothing of Conservatives, that you find yourself wondering what part of Conservatism these people do believe in. Answer: they're Conservatives, but they don't do any actual Conservatism. To them, politics is not about ideals, objectives or vision. Politics is, in essence, one huge cocktail party where the enlightened swap polite chat over the canapés while the great unwashed roam around outside doing whatever proles do all day (no doubt, including 'business' whatever that might be). They might not have any firm ideas about politics, but they sure have definite ideas about their own importance.

Needless to say, the fundamental snobbery and elitism of these people means they get by just ducky with Nu Lab. Indeed, if only Labour would rid itself of oiks like Skinner and Kilfoyle and just admit that sometimes the servants do need a damn good thrashing, the TINOs would jump ship ASAP. Equally, they hate Lady T, The Gipper and Dubya for exactly the opposite reasons. None of these three spent any time with the Cocktail Kings. Not only that, they went the other way: appealing to the common rabble, firing up Joe Public and unleashing the full power of the ordinary, honest, patriotic citizen. Instead of making polite chat, they made history. And the TINOs never forgave them.

Of course, there is certain demographic out there to which this kind of pretentious babbling appeals. Which brings us nicely back to Plastic Gangster. He sees himself there, chatting with Mike and Francis, swapping sub-Wildesque one-liners and expanding on his faux Den Beste babblings on strategy. He don't need actual arguments, he's enlightened. Stop arguing with him, scum.

Well, enough already. This is the Internet and everyone's invited. Hey - if I'm offending anybody, just drop me a line and I'll turn it up. This is my site and that means real Conservatism. But you can be sure that reading this site there's one thing you will never be asked to do, and that thing is this: trust me. I write for my own reasons, but, in so far as I'm arrogant enough to think my random tapings have any effect on you, I'd be delighted to change a few minds, I'd hope to open a few, I'll settle for raising a smile and if all else fails, I'll take mild annoyance. That means I want to argue my points, try and convince you by laying out my case, not relying on smug asides, sneering or the bludgeoning thuggery of the 'of course we all agree…' school of rhetoric. Of course, I admit this does give me an unfair advantage. After all, you do need some actual ideals before you can argue for them.

No comments: