The Scum of The Earth

A fine appreciation of irony is, we like to think, a characteristic that defines us as Englishmen and women and one of the supreme ironies of Br*tish history is that those who were lauded for having made Br*tain great invariably garnered the credit, and the honours, that rightly belonged to those whose lives were governed by their whim, and whom they not infrequently despised. The Anglo-Irishman Arthur Wellesley once described the men under his command as 'the scum of the Earth', yet his fame was founded on their unwavering courage and unquestioning loyalty. It was a bitter irony that many of them ended their days as inmates of workhouses or as crippled beggars on street corners. A reasonable person looking at the way that their successors are treated today might not unreasonably assume that those who ultimately control them share the opinion of His Grace.

Another characteristic that we like to think defines us is an ability to laugh at ourselves, and our blackly ironic humour has certainly seen us through some dark days, but for some of those who have taken The Queen's shilling laughter rings hollow and the continued failure of our 'leaders' to take their plight seriously smacks of taking the piss.

It is blackly ironic, though far from funny, that when our servicemen and women return from defending democracy in some land that, often, few here knew existed beforehand, they find that as far as those whose freedom they guarantee, such as the good people of Ashtead, Surrey, are concerned, they are still, apparently, 'the scum of the Earth'.

So much for 'progress', so much for 'social democracy'.