British Sarah Palin-Type Lady Is Quite Cross Indeed About Nasty Poors

Don't British people always sound so jolly and polite? With their pip pip cheerio and their codswallop and fiddle sticks, we're sure they are always just saying lovely things, even if we can't understand a Limey word. Today we are very sad to learn that even though it sounds quite melodious, apparently British pundits and politicians and pundit-politicians can be huge dicks when they natter on about poor people, just like their upstart colonial counterparts. Who knew??

Break it down for us England-stylee, former Tory Health Minister Edwina Currie, whom we totally had to look up on Wikipedia to understand all this junior health minister and MP jibber jabber. Short version: for a brief and shining moment she was a junior health minister, but then gaffed so repeatedly and spectacularly that she had to resign after two years, at which point she became a member of Parliament (that's British for Congresscritter). When the glorious people's Tony Blair Labour revolution forced her out, she did what any good grifty lady does: she became a ceaseless reality show presence and right-wing hack writer. Oh, and she also carried on like a common trollop with Prime Minster John Major for four years and then wrote a tell-all book about it, so you know she is super nice and reliable and thoughtful. Take it away, Edwina! 

Writing for the Spectator's Coffee House blog, Currie argues that food banks end up making people poorer rather than helping them.

"Free food subsidises low wages; it helps support the black economy. It pauperises those it seeks to help. Like giving money to ‘homeless’ beggars on London streets, it encourages more of what it seeks to relieve.

The ironic scare quotes around "homeless" are, of course, all Edwina, because we here at Wonkette actually believe in homeless people instead of thinking them ironic or fictional. Perhaps she misspoke and has otherwise always gently covered the poor in clotted cream and spotted dick trundled in by the nicest of lorries? Nope! 

Currie's controversial comments after she used a radio appearance to accuse food bank users of spending their cash on tattoos and dog food rather than food.

She told BBC Radio Stoke: '"I get very, very troubled at the number of people who are using food banks who think that it's fine to pay to feed their dog, their dog is in good nick and beautiful, but they never learn to cook, they never learn to manage and the moment they've got a bit of spare cash they're off getting another tattoo.

"We should feel cross about this, all of us."

Wait. We thought "nick" was fancy British talk for stoled, but now we learn it is about a well-kept dog? EVERYTHING WE KNOW IS A LIE. And we do feel quite cross about this. Very cross indeed! We are simply bubbling over with cross, because you, Mrs. Former Tory Health Minister, are not a very nice lady and have some downright stupid and depressing things to say about poor people, which is apparently Your Special Thing, what with your "good Christian people can't get AIDS" and your "northerners die ofignorance and chips." 

OK, actually, that last one is pretty good, and sounds properly British, doesn't it? From now on, we shall be telling everyone stupid that they are dying of ignorance and chips, which sounds both more polite and more terrible than just straight up telling them they are ignorant. We grudgingly thank you for that, Edwina Currie, but otherwise we think you are naff and gormless.

[ HuffPost UK ]