The wit and wisdom of... (number 1)

Ray Winstone

"I'm a bit of a binge drinker – once I'm on it, I'm on it".

'They (drugs) are the biggest problem in the world today, and one of the reasons the troops are in Afghanistan. There are countries paying off national deficits over them and we've got kids dying every day thanks to drugs".

It's just a thought, but the man who says that drugs are the world's number one problem but also seems to revel in being a binge drinker, is a steaming hypocrite.

Politically he's slightly out about Afghanistan. He has probably forgotten that the Bush administration paid the Taliban over $40 million in 2001 for suppressing the drugs trade. Actually, what he says makes next to no sense. Perhaps he was a little addled when he said it.

When someone bleats about deaths caused by drugs but glamorises drinking, he is a buffoon. In 2007 there were 8,724 alcohol-related deaths in the UK. Perhaps we should be invading the vinyards of France.

And this was after a wonderful piece of populist nonsense in Psychologies in which he described himself as a rebel and followed it up with:

I don’t take any shit, especially from politicians. I’m sick to death of these so-called intellectuals running my life, taking money off me, and being taxed on top of tax. I don’t mind Boris Johnson. He’s off the wall, but I prefer him to that other gangster, Livingstone. He’s a complete liar. A wrong ‘un.

Now, I'm not saying that there's no such thing as a conservative rebel, nor am I suggesting that Ken Livingstone was the nearest thing to a saint, but the language he uses is so obviously short-sighted. It's "man of the people" nonsense. It's sounds plausible but doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

Ahh, celebrity, how we listen to you views and take them at face value. Ahh, celebrity, how we love it when you project your personality.

But, to start with, you say you don't take any shit and then complain that they are shitting on you through the medium of taxation. And why is there this insistence on using intellectuals as a pejorative term? All this macho nonsense. All this snap judgment of politics is exactly what the problem is. It's this kind of populist idiocy that means that any decision made by the so-called intellectuals is based on how it plays with the country rather than whether it's a good decision.

Short-termism is the new black.