Martin Hannan: You name it, I probably hate it

Published on Monday 19 July 2010 13:17

Most of us have pet hates and aren't slow to carp about them. Some of us even get paid to write about them. Leaving aside the strange nature of the phrase - it's surely an oxymoron to have a 'pet' that is also a 'hate' - I often wonder why we develop PHs, as I call them, and then I realise it's a good way of getting things off your chest.

As a columnist, it is my duty to have pet hates, but unlike most people, we scribes have to update them regularly or else readers would get bored with us banging on about the same subject.

Every so often, therefore, it is a useful exercise to hang out the hate line and see who is on it, in order to ensure we have a whole new batch of pet hates several months from now.

So who are this column's current PHs? Well let's start with Gordon Dewar, managing director of Edinburgh Airport.

I can't claim to know the man, and I'm sure he's kind to children and animals, but his plan to impose the 1 'kiss and fly' tax for people being dropped off at the airport is just so typical of the corporate arrogance that bedevils this country.

It is a fundamentally nasty charge. Either you pay your quid or drop off your relative or friend far out at the airport long stay car park so that they can get a shuttle bus. Of course everyone will pay the 1, and he knows it. It's effectively taxation without representation, and represents all that is wrong with the money-grabbing, public-bashing ethos of UK plc.

Mr Dewar has also been monumentally ignorant. He cited the support of Edinburgh Chamber of Commerce and Ryanair for his charge, which is a bit like getting Tiger Woods to write the foreword for your marital advice guide. Aligning himself with big business apologists and greedy airline owners was hardly calculated to endear Mr Dewar to the public.

BAA wouldn't dare try this experiment at Glasgow or elsewhere, so why single out Edinburgh? At the moment, Gordon Dewar is PH No.1, but that's on a local basis.

Far more worrying on a national scale is the ConDem Government of Messrs. Cameron and Clegg. As always when writing about politics, I remind you of my SNP membership but every member of every party should hate CamClegg for what they are doing.

There is no need for the scale of public sector cuts they are proposing, and they will seriously damage the Scottish economy.

Far more sinister, however, is the way they have changed British politics without so much as a by your leave, and have taken the Queen - whether you like it or not, she is head of state - out of the equation.

The move to five-year fixed-term parliaments was not in any party's manifesto. There was a commitment by the Lib Dems to fixed terms between elections, but let's face it - they came third with just 23 per cent of the vote.So why are we now looking at a fundamental change that alters the constitution of the UK by summarily ending the Royal Prerogative? Whether you agree that the monarch should have such a power or not, I think most of her loyal subjects would like to have been told before the election that the Queen, in consultation as always with the Prime Minister or Privy Council, would no longer have the power to ask someone to form a Government.

It's one example of the reasons why we are sleepwalking to disaster under the ConDems. They are not nice people - they are thoroughly distasteful, power-mad public school types, and I hate them already.

Other political pet hates? Michael Gove, the Edinburgh-born, Aberdeen-raised journalist who is now England's minister for education. Because he has been so inept, we Scots have had to listen to insufferably long tirades and debate about English schools, and guess what - we don't care about them.

What about the US senators inquiring into the non-existent Megrahi BP deal - I hate their sanctimonious claptrap.

Celebrities? Alan Carr's hair is a real PH pet hate. Who cares if the chatty man has had a hair transplant or not? It just shows you how fixated on fame we have become that a camp comedian's pate is the subject of articles even in otherwise sensible newspapers.

The 'summer' weather - how I hate it. Those television pictures from St Andrews of the gales and rain summed it up. Scotland in July - the tourist boards will have their work cut out pretending they were just isolated showers and squalls.

Seagulls? Kill them all, especially those that have recently taken to depositing on cars in my home area.

I could add the roadworks all round the city, but they are a permanent hate. Take the closure of Blackfriars Street for resurfacing from June 21 for three weeks - it took four. Do the people responsible not realise that misinforming the public is as big an irritation as the works themselves?

I would also have cited the England football team as a pet hate, largely because of their domination of the London media. Instead, I'm too busy laughing, and won't stop for months.