What £60,000 would buy…
If you - like me - got annoyed to read about £60k of taxpayers’ money being spent on a Hackney headteachers’ junket to Arizona, then spare a thought for local MP Diane Abbott. Sixty grand would only buy her son 14.67 terms - or less than five years - at his public school.
Wouldn’t it be nice to spend the cash on Hackney’s kids for a change?
Fat chance.
Published on 23rd October, 2008
Comment Snob
What a brilliant idea. Some technical cove has come up with a Firefox browser extension called “YouTube Comment Snob“. All you have to do is download it, restart your browser and - hey presto! - all the illiterate, half-witted, foul-mouthed comments on YouTube disappear.
Like so.
It’s simple, really. Comments are filtered out if they:
- have more than a specified number spelling mistakes:
- are written solely in capital letters
- have no capital letters at all
- don’t start with a capital letter
- use excessive punctuation (!!!! ???? !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
- use excessive capitalization
- contain profanity.
Which rather set me thinking. Maybe, just maybe, the author might be willing to collaborate with me to create…
Comment is Free Comment Snob
The idea is simple. Any comment that falls into the following categories will automatically be removed from the page:
- Dreary, half-baked tosspottery about Israel and/ or Palestine. Especially on articles that have nothing to do with either - like heavyweight pieces on West End boutiques or guides on staging operas in your own home.
- Patronising dismissal of any logical argument (and thus defence of one’s fondly-cherished prejudices) with phrases like “the beauty of your argument is its simplicity”.
- Accusations that other commenters are Tories, simply because they don’t drool at the thought of Ken Livingstone.
Indeed, before I get carried away, why don’t we go the whole hog and invent a browser extension that deletes articles by anyone who falls into one or more of these categories?
- A banger on about the plight of the poor who earns a six-figure salary.
- A relative of someone else who works on the Guardian.
- An occasional, non-journalist contributor who has been on holiday with anyone who works for the Guardian.
- An environment bore who buys a car the moment they actually need one.
- A columnist who is secretly indignant that they’ve not been poached by The Times, where they’d get a fatter salary and a wider readership.
I could go on, but I think that’s enough to make the thing readable once again. I could just about face leafing through something like this over my morning tea and toast:
Or maybe I’ve been too hasty. A browser plugin that pastes Simon Hoggart’s latest parliamentary sketch over any Comment is Free page would do the job perfectly.
I only wish I knew how to write it myself.
Published on 26th August, 2008
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