The news yesterday that the village of Edenbridge will be burning an effigy of Katie Hopkins on their bonfirehad me feeling a) sorry for her, even though she's taken it with good grace, and b) baffled by some people's priorities.
Hopkins has been rude about fat children and snobbish about working-class ones, but has she ever really done anything which really merits a 30-foot steel effigy of her being burned in front of a baying mob high off toffee apples?
With the aim of talking about her in a way which isn't just providing divisive soundbites to distract us all from what we should really be getting wound up about, here's some people who might actually deserve the Edenbridge treatment.
David Cameron
Okay, so he's the Prime Minister and gets flack every day of his life, but the fact that his boiled ham complexion is still looking so rosy is proof enough that we're not throwing enough hate his way. Hopkins might have some ridiculous opinions, but she's never actually carried out the legislative equivalent of taking candy from babies, kicking crutches away from disabled people and throwing families out on the streets.
He backed Osborne's comments that there was a link between benefits and the murder of the Philpott children. He tells women to "calm down Dear" and then claims to be a feminist. He's implemented a bedroom tax which has led to a 338% increase in emergency handouts. Food banks are being swamped whilst his ministers poo-poo that people really need them. He wants to cut benefits altogether for the under 25s. He's begging for an effigy.
Barack Obama
Look, I love his winning smile, dance moves and liberal sensibilities as much as the next woman with needs, but the guy's responsible for someone's lovely old Gran dying horrifically for no apparent reason and he won't even TALK about it.
Rafiq ur Rehman's mother Momina Bibi was killed in a drone strike which came out of nowhere whilst she was gathering okra with her grandchildren. He travelled thousands of miles with those children to appear in Congress on Tuesday where he plead for justice, for an explanation. Five congressmen turned up to meet him. Barack has stayed the strong silent type, not just about Momina, but about each of the Pakistani civilians killed by drones since 2008.
Tax dodgers
We all know all about them. We know Amazon has done it under the pretence that they're not based in Britain, although nothing which wasn't even a little bit British would ever put up with Slough. We know Philip Green gets away with it by pulling an innocent face and pointing at his wife. We know Starbucks claims that it's flinging of free lattes at people with wild, charitable abandon has been responsible for it actually running at a loss, and so they couldn't pay tax even if they wanted to.
Do you know how much tax evasion costs the UK every year? $109 billion. It's more than the entire defence budget, certainly more than the costs of paying the deficit and enough to pay for battalions of nurses, cops, firemen and teachers. The government won't do anything about it, but then again we're not smashing their windows and widdling in the jacuzzis we paid for either: a good bit of effigy burning would be a good way to get things moving.
Kim Jong-Il
LOL Dennis Rodman's visiting him! LOL he's launching a crappy rocket! LOL look at those funny military parades! LOL did you hear about that time he made mothers drown their own children in buckets? LOL! ROFL. Did you know North Koreans have had to eat grass to survive? Did you hear how he has them chained to each other? And executed? LMAO. LMAO. LMAO.
For reasons probably to do with society being unable to separate racist puppet-comedy from fact, we all see the Dear Leader and the country he views as his plaything as a hilarious joke. There'll be people turning up as him at Halloween parties up and down the country, who would vomit their liberal sensibilities through their eyeballs if you suggested they stick a swastika on that khaki and go as Hitler. Kim Jong Un is not a hilarious chubby clown. Kim Jong Un is a malevolent psychopathic dictator.
The judges who told us that work fare isn't forced labour
Talking of countries who sanction slavery, did you see the High Court decision on Wednesday? They rejected Ian Duncan Smith's appeal against his workfare scheme being unlawful. He got a bit of egg on his face and everyone went ballistic until they realised that whilst the courts had given Duncan-Smith a bit of a telling off, they'd also rejected the notion that the schemes were "exploitative" and amounted to "forced labour".
So the situation in the UK is now this. If you want to claim jobseekers' allowance, which is funded by your own National Insurance, then alongside attending interviews, applying for jobs and sobbing into your cold cans of beans, you have to work full shifts, unpaid, probably doing some other peasant out of their wages whilst you're at it. And even though you've no choice but to so because your benefits will be taken away if you refuse, this isn't exploitative. Cheers, justice system.