A classic of its kind

I often wonder if people on the BBC's Have Your (Reactionary) Say messageboard are kosher carpet-thumping little Englanders foaming at the mouth like a can of recently-shaken warm lager; or whether they're simply Mike Gigglers collaborating in a huge mass participation art installation in order to represent the most insanely reactionary and bile-filled views as being the most popular ones in Britain.

I'd always like to think the latter. I'd like to hope there's a secret club to which I haven't yet been invited, who meet up once a week to chat about tactics and how they're going to make something really unimaginative, foam-flecked and dimwitted be voted to the top of the pile. In my mind it's an ironic OuLiPo-style artistic collaboration between self-styled Bohemian artistes, all designed to subvert the medium of internet commenting and messageboards. If Joe Orton were alive nowadays you just know that Edna Welthorpe would be turning up on these messageboards all the time, sucking everyone in.

And then you read this comment, in response to the innocently titled discussion "What can be done to tackle child poverty?"



And you think: No. They really must be fucknuts.

Depressing.