The Daily Mail Hates Fun

So I have a new Daily Mail theory (I’m not obsessed you know).

 They want to make Britain as miserable and joyless a place as it is possible (see the 1980’s for details) to make it so that only people who really, really love the concept of Great Britain will want to stay here. Then, after everyone who has no love for this country has left (you know the sort, immigrants, Lefties, Guardian readers), the work to make it lovely again will begin.

 My theory comes from the fact that this “Newspaper” seems to rail against the things that make living here fun. They hate modern art and spending of public money on it. They hate the fact that we are having the Olympics (probably because foreign people will come here to compete or some will see Britain on television and want to visit) and many other things that will make living here a bit more fun. They revel in other people’s failures and misery if they are not the Mail’s sort of person. They are the Schadenfreude Times. They snipe and grouse at celebrities that they don’t think are worthy of fame. They hate high culture, it too elitist, and they hate low culture, it’s too chavy. They hate fun.

 Their latest attempt to remove the joy from our lives came this weekend. They published a story about Lord Triesman, who was head of the English bid for the 2018 (he has since resigned), in which they claimed that they had a recording of him suggesting Spain could drop its bid if rival bidder Russia helped bribe referees at this summer's World Cup. Now, he has said "In that conversation I commentated on speculation circulating about conspiracies around the world," he went on “Those comments were never intended to be taken seriously as indeed is the case with many private conversations."

 Now, whether said this as a joke or as a serious allegation is not that important. What is important is the timing of their publication. They printed the story (which wasn’t that interesting or earth shattering and that they really didn’t need to publish but did anyway) just a few days after our bid for the World Cup had been handed in.

 The paper had the tape for about 2 weeks but choose to publish it now, why? Well a less cynical person might say that they only did it to increase their circulation, a story about a recent event type of thing, but as I say they sat on it for 2 weeks and, according to David Bond’s blog on the BBC Website, at least one other paper was offered the tape but didn’t want it. That paper didn’t want to try and fuck up our chances at getting the World Cup but that didn’t worry the Mail on Sunday. They did it on purpose to embarrass the FA and to try and ruin our bid.

 Football is another thing that they don’t like, probably because it is young men from poor families who are earning rather a lot of money and foreigns own a lot of the clubs, even though having the World Cup here would be great of the country, both in terms of revenue and exposure. On top of that it would be FUN!

We must not let them win. Britain can be a place of music and art, of interesting people, of exciting food, the things that make life worth living. Even in these times of austerity we must continue to have fun and to expose ourselves (not like that my gutter minded readers) to beauty and intellectual challenge. It’s good for you and it’s fun.