ANGRY MOB

I'm not entirely sure what the point of Liz Jones is. She seems to be the most vacuous, pointless and unpleasant waste of oxygen writing for the Daily Mail - and that is some accolade. Whilst I understand the appeal (to a Daily Mail reader) of Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips (they both hate Britain and anything modern) and Richard Littlejohn (he hates Britain, gays, blacks, elf 'n' safety, PC gone mad etc) I just cannot understand what any reader could possibly take away from a Liz Jones article - apart from the desire to beat her to death with her own overpriced handbags.

Her latest effort - 'Benidorm lager louts? What about those Himalayan espresso louts?' - is about what a spoilt person she is, and therefore she assumes we all act and think the same way. To summarise her article - as I am under no illusion about how difficult and tedious it is to try and read anything by Liz Jones and I don't expect you to go to the trouble of reading the above article unless you to want to be overcome with the desire to kill her - drunken lower-classes holidaying abroad are only as bad as middle/upper class people like who go to poor countries, use the locals as slaves and ignore poor, starving children whilst all the time parading around with extremely expensive items. It is important to realise that when she is attacking 'middle/upper class people' for behaving badly she actually means 'I' - as in 'Liz Jones is just as bad'.

Here is a chunk of her confession about what a terrible sack of wasted flesh she is:

I first thought about the injustice of only the rich thinking they own the rights to the world’s beauty spots, to its sunshine and smells, when I went on holiday
to a small island off the coast of Mozambique. I took a succession of aeroplanes that decreased in size, Russian-doll fashion, in order to reach this far-flung patch of paradise.

I stayed in an open-sided log villa that had not long before been slept in by Nancy Dell’Olio and Sven-Goran Eriksson. I got to watch, by torchlight, giant turtles lay their eggs in the hot sand.

Only a few feet away from this spectacle was the village where the locals lived. The men were mostly alcoholics and the women defeated by repetitive manual labour, such as teetering on the edge of a stinking well to haul up water, or tending scrub-like patches of crops.

The children had the swollen bellies of malnutrition, while each morning I was greeted by a man whose raison d’etre was to squeeze my pineapples.

The same uncomfortable friction was true when I holidayed in Jamaica. I was driven through the capital, gazing at the poverty on the streets, and then ensconced in what turned out to be a fortress patrolled by guards with machine guns. I had my own Jamaican butler who prepared my food and looked after me. He worked a 14-hour day, six days a week, and never saw his family.

In India, staying on the banks of the lake at Udaipur, I was ashamed to be bathing in rose petals when, a few feet below me, women and children were washing in and drinking from the dregs of a lake bled dry by its necklace of five-star hotels.

In Thailand, the young man whose job it was to take me out on a boat at dawn and hold my hand as I snorkelled had dreams of becoming a doctor but instead had to kowtow to a stupid woman (me) who was worried about scratching her Cartier Tank...

To my shame, given the locals didn’t have electricity and cooked on wood fires on dirt floors, each morning I insisted they make espresso coffee for me. I had brought along my own Illy beans and a special pot.

I wonder what these people think of us with our cameras and our iPods. I’m sure it’s no better than what goes through a Greek taverna owner’s mind as he sweeps up broken bottles. We need to think less about the world being our playground and more about it being fair.

..and yet you keep going to these places to turn the light of your countenance on the starving, impoverished locals, no doubt to their boundless delight. "Never mind the poverty and malnutrition all around me - carry my case and make me an espresso, pronto."

- Steve, South Tyneside, 12/7/2009 11:20

Click to rate Rating 112

"We need to think less about the world being our playground and more about it being fair."

Wow Liz! I think you mean 'You' all the way through this article.

I've not been to any of the places you've been to, much less abused the local starving population. You obviously enjoy doing it though, appearing to go regularly on such holidays.

- Tony B, France, 12/7/2009 10:12

Click to rate Rating 174

And the point of this piece is? To tell us that Ms Jones holidays 'with the rich'? Any one with access to a search engine could have acquired some background knowledge before setting off with Illy beans and espresso pot.
What conclusions has she drawn from her startling insights?
That some people can afford luxury holidays alongside some of the world's poorest people?
The whole tone of this piece seems to me to be insufferably smug.

- Prague Pix, Marbella Spain, 12/7/2009 8:50

Click to rate Rating 89