It's hard to work out who is in danger of seeming more ridiculous, a Conservative / Government Chief Whip who has a clear problem with anger management or the police guarding Downing Street and their representatives who, as one commentator has said, have had a Victorian-style fit of the vapours about being called nasty names.
'Pleb' seems now to be the latest word on the uptight PC (pun intended) banned list; one might have thought other words alleged to have been used were far more offensive...
But is it really any worse to be called a 'pleb' than, say, an 'upper-class twit' or being likened, as the Prime Minister has been, to 'Flashman' (either in Thomas Hughes' or George MacDonald Fraser's characterisation, I don't suppose it matters)
As a pleb myself (and how many policeman are members of the Roman senatorial aristocracy or its English equivalent?) all this hoo ha seems just a little bit overdone. Obviously the country is facing so few problems that it's obvious why this particular story should have dominated the news cycle for days.
In any case, pleb is an honourable enough name - we are all part of the 'plebs sancta Dei' after all...
Well put. Indeed, I'm only surprised that the constable in question didn't fall about laughing at him, & that the press didn't roundly mock him, when the gentleman in question 'whipped out' (sorry!) such an arcane term ...
ReplyDeleteIndeed Father, as a pleb myself I want to see plebs restored to their rightful place, in the higher echelons of government. After all they can't be any worse than the hooray henrys (perhaps they could!)I think the silly season has been affected by the climate change so it has come later this year
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