I thought it was Americans who didn’t understand irony. It seems some of you Brits struggle with it too. Writing in today’s Telegraph, LBC radio host Iain Dale claims that he can no longer “support this irrational lockdown.”
Iain Dale is a Tory. He tried and failed several times to be a Tory MP. He wrote some books about Margaret Thatcher. I read one of them. I nearly coughed up my spleen laughing at his attempt to deify Maggie the paedophile protector. Dale is useless, therefore he’s perfect for LBC radio. Writing in today’s Telegraph he said:
I’ve strongly supported the Government’s various decisions on lockdown. People have accused me of being a lockdown hawk, and up to now they would have been right. However, we are now in a very different situation. Hospitals are in no danger of being overrun. The Delta variant may be leading to a rise in the number of cases, but given most adults have now had at least one dose of the vaccine, and half the population has had both, the danger of hospitalisation and/or death is a fraction of what it was before.
Dale is no journalist, therefore he doesn’t understand the primary tenet of journalism, which is objectivity. It shouldn’t matter that he stood for the Tories or idolised Thatcher. As a radio presenter, his job is to scrutinise the government of the day, to turn them upside down and shake them vigorously, to see what falls out.
His job is to see to it, that those who oppose the government and the SAGE scientists are platformed. He has a duty to his audience to acquaint them with all sides of the debate. It’s borderline criminal, for him to admit in a national newspaper that he was a “lockdown hawk.”
Yes, Iain Dale has no sense of irony. It takes a special kind of idiot to write a piece in The Telegraph, lamenting irrational lockdowns, when if he’d done his job last year, it might have been over a long time ago.