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"Stroud Green": New journalistic device for right wing simpletons
Please update your style guides. From the Telegraph:
<http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100089532/outrageous-we-cant-have-people-who-disagree-with-the-liberal-consensus-thats-so-victorian/>;
*This isn’t about “Victorian” or even “medieval” sexual morality, as the truly idiotic commenters below claim, but a realisation that the current, very expensive sexual health system is not very effective, especially in altering the behaviour of the young and the poor; the problem with contraception, whether it’s the pill or condoms, is that it works great with sensible, responsible people, **ie Guardian-reading teachers from Stroud Green who write letters to Weekend magazine correcting the spelling of some third world city**. It’s vastly less effective with semi-literate 14-year-olds who half-want to get pregnant to fill their lives with some meaning.*
Apart from "this is ace", I had a few thoughts.
1. Who has ever heard of Stroud Green? Seriously, most taxi drivers haven't even heard of it. I still have to tell most of them to drop me off just after Finsbury Park. If you're calling people names, then at least call them names other people have heard of.
2. This is gentrification at work. Time was, numpty Telegraph columnists would use Barnsbury or Highbury as their leitmotifs of the wishy-washy liberal left. But because Telegraph-reading investment bankers have pushed all the lentil-eaters out of those areas, it doesn't make sense for numpty Telegraph columnists with stupid facial hair to alienate their core readership.
3. He couldn't have said 'Finsbury Park' in place of Stroud Green because most people outside London would have thought about mosques. Which is a bit race-baity, even for the Telegraph.
4. In your face Crouch End. "Crouch End" would have fit perfectly in that sentence, but he didn't choose it. Stroud Green has totally beaten Crouch End.
5. If he'd taken the trouble to read the thread about the people outside Tesco, he'd find the citizens of Stroud Green have a fairly authoritarian streak when it comes to vulnerable people, so may not be the best example of the point he's trying to make. Whatever that point might be.
6. This is just the start. I won't really be happy until some proper nutbar columnist (e.g. Littlejohn) writes a sentence like "the complacent guardianistas sipping lattes in the Front Room Cafe on Tollington Park". Then we've really made it.
7. The 'blogs' bit is the giveaway. This article is not the real newspaper. It's where they put the silly trolling, baiting articles like 'immigration is horrid' and 'the EU are nazis' designed to get links and comments. So it's best ignored.
8. Except for the bit about Stroud Green. Which I have duly risen to.
Happy Tuesday.
Comments
One minute your'e standing waiting for a bus (not a W7, W3 or even 210 in sight) and the next, according to the Telegraph, you've had three abortions or more...
And I like the jounalist's own biog. Specialising in "low culture"...Says it all...
You know how it is - you wait ages for an abortion, then three come along at once!
made my day
The Guardian's ban on SG! is this yet another example of lazy generic snobbism? Hardly surprising given the belief that Stroud Green is a made up place name, as opposed to one that predates Crouch End and Finsbury Park. Perhaps the origins of this attitude stem from the heady years for estate agents of the late '80's-/early '90's or London cabbies? Time Out, that 'bible' of ersatz, once reviewed SGR and the area in an article headlined 'The Stroud Green Riviera' [true!] However we are not entirely overlooked by the media as there is regular acknowledgement on BBC London for Stroud Green on the Robert Elms show which has a regular contributor[s] from here.