Martin Amis on Andrew Marr
If you missed him, there'll probably be a web broadcast via the Sunday Andrew Marr page.
He reviewed the papers with Amanda Platell who's pretty repugnant herself. Amis compared the press frenzy over Rowan Williams to 'Abu Hamza stirring it up' which seems about right to me. Platell said something like 'the papers can only reflect what their readers think' -- really the most amazing bollocks. Amis rightly pointed out that the Sun's coverage was grossly distorted and not a reflection of anything. All in all, he was pretty good. He did talk some frightful nonsense about the Italian population halving each generation or something and the Muslims catching up, but he was much more reasonable and cogent than I've come to expect from his recent writing and interviews.
He reviewed the papers with Amanda Platell who's pretty repugnant herself. Amis compared the press frenzy over Rowan Williams to 'Abu Hamza stirring it up' which seems about right to me. Platell said something like 'the papers can only reflect what their readers think' -- really the most amazing bollocks. Amis rightly pointed out that the Sun's coverage was grossly distorted and not a reflection of anything. All in all, he was pretty good. He did talk some frightful nonsense about the Italian population halving each generation or something and the Muslims catching up, but he was much more reasonable and cogent than I've come to expect from his recent writing and interviews.
posted by Chardonnay Chap at 2/10/2008 09:20:00 AM
8 Comments:
The more i think about it the more i think that this is Amis trying to construct a 'legacy' for himself, so that he can be the one soothsayer who knew that Europe was doomed all along, this is where civilisation gets you, etc etc. The sad thing is that he's still relying on Mark Steyn's book for ALL his 'facts', and Steyn's figures are not only compeltely wrong but also fail to take into account cross-European migration. There are a lot more Poles moving to Britain than Muslims, and a lot more Romanians in Italy.
And that's before we get to the bit where he claims that because a minority of British Muslims want some aspects of Sharia incorporated into British law (and as the Guardian pointed out if it's good enough for the Jews...), that naturally means that the, um, majority also do, and as such if they ever became a majority (relying on Steyn's bogus figures here) they would put religion into the law or some such.
The problem is that he is relying on bogus figures, and his 'postulations' don't look any less ugly with question marks after them.
What has Amanda Platell ever done of any merit? As far as I can see she's someone who's prominent in the media simply by virtue of having become prominent in the media. (Also see "Odone, C".)
Amis has simply realised that talking "provocatively" about Islam = readers. He didn't like the fact that no one was listening to him any more. Now he gets to go on Andrew Marr. His strategy has worked.
What has Amanda Platell ever done of any merit?
She helped William Hague lose the 2001 general election.
...while promoting herself far more effectively than she ever did Hague. She does the "perky but tough Aussie" act well; media wankers tend to fold up easily faced with it.
She also wrote a bonkbuster novel, which while being embarrassingly dire (and Eve Pollard should really have sued) was much more fun than anything Mart's written of late.
Presumably though the only reason she was able to have it published was that she possessed a "name".
I guess the point I'm making is that even if you're talking about Richard Littlejohn, the reason he has newspaper columns is because he has a certain ability to form and express opinions. He doesn't have it because he's hung about the right people for a while.
I think what Martin Amis is doing is wondering what happens when one diverts from the rather pathetically supine views of the government and the baffled embarrassment of the general public before people . He deserves our respect precisely for his readiness to speak his own views rather than just parrot the dangerous nonsense of the pc brigade.
At what point in the gradual erosion of the British identity do the British public have a legitimate case in asking 'What's going on here?' It doesn't matter where Amis gets his statistics from. If not from Steyn then there are many other places he (and us) could find them, and they all say more or less the same thing. The birthrate of white Europeans is tumbling and that of dark skinned immigrants is rising. 1.4 babies per pink mother, and 3.4 babies by brown mother. You do the maths, as they say…
You don't have to be a genius to work out that sooner or later white or light-skinned Europeans will be in a racial minority compared to Asians and Africans.
When I travel on the bus to work every evening in London I am the only white person on the bus. Is it wrong of me to question this situation? Is it so wrong of Martin Amis to suggest that there is a fundamental change going on across European societies that no-one has the courage to even speak about, let alone question?
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