Film maker Ken Loach is estimated to be worth £5 million as a result of a lifetime of making incredibly boring and sanctimonious films attacking rich people. Hypocrisy is his middle name and as he plugs his latest movie which shows how poor folk are exploited by our fascist benefits system the old windbag appeared on Question Time last night. True to form he was as mad as a next of snakes.
To his credit he declined to indulge in the one sided Putin bashing section of the show, leaving that to the professional politicians Greg Clark (Con), Kier Starmer (Lab) and some ghastly harridan from the Lib Dems. Much to the annoyance of an audience dulled by a biased media which sees Putin as the only source of evil in the world, Ken had the nerve to point out that the record of the West in the Middle East was also utterly rotten, indeed that it was our meddling that had created the current crisis.
It was on Heathrow and the new runway that he was on his best form. Ken, natch, believes in man made global warming and claimed that Britain will be a desert in 100 years as a result. And though we account for a tiny fraction of man made carbon emissions Ken reckons we might avoid the forthcoming sand storm by not building a third runway at Heathrow.
A member of the audience challenged him on all the flights the old bore took to pick up awards for, and to plug, his dreadful movies. Ken clarified: he does not want to stop existing flights just to stop us taking any more. Hmmmmm so we are going to see camels wandering around Reading in 2116 searching for an oasis because of current carbon emissions but Ken is not tackling them just stopping any increase in emissions.
Loach's science is bogus, his predictions pure fiction and not based on any hard facts but it is his wretched hypocrisy that really grates. That he lectures us all that we should pay more tax, something that will really hurt lower income earners, as he sits like Smaug on a pile of gold, is bad enough. But his aversion to cheaper air travel - which has transformed the lives of poor folks - but unwillingness to alter his own, comfortable, lifestyle is just nauseating.